Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 78: Wed Mar 18

BFI SOUTHBANK HAS CLOSED OWING TO THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK AND THIS EVENT AND ALL FUTURE SCREENINGS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED OR POSTPONED. FOR FULL DETAILS CLICK HERE.


The Deep End (Siegel/McGehee, 2001): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.50pm

The film that launched Tilda Swinton’s Hollywood career is a taut, Hitchcockian thriller about a mother in dire straits. The 35mm presentation also screens on March 14th (details here) and is part of the Swinton season at BFI Southbank.

Time Out review:Perhaps inevitably, this suffers in comparison both with McGehee and Siegel's extraordinary debut Suture and with Max Ophuls' The Reckless Moment, of which this is an intelligent, gay-inflected remake. Tilda Swinton gives one of her finest performances yet as the woman whose teenage son gets involved with a gay hustler; when she finds the man's corpse, she tries to hide it, but soon finds herself being blackmailed. Changing the gender of her offspring spices and thickens the brew, rather than creating a whole new flavour, but the film-makers have succeeded in translating the story for the present without the melodrama becoming merely hysterical or camp. Giles Nuttgens' cool, sumptuous shots of the Lake Tahoe settings fit the mood admirably.

Here (and above) is the trailer.