Film Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s

  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
THE WEIGHT OF WATER

Kathryn Bigelow made the arty and sluggish The Weight of Water before turning her attention to the generic and plodding K-19: The Widowmaker ("The Wait in Water"?), and this long-shelved curio recaptures some of the tension and depth that made her breakthrough film, Near Dark (1987), so promising. Based on the novel by Anita Shreve, it’s the parallel narrative of two women in crisis in different centuries (the premise also of Possession and Stephen Daldry’s upcoming The Hours).

Jean (Catherine McCormack), a photojournalist, is researching a story about a mysterious murder on New Hampshire’s Isle of Shoals in 1873. Found dead in their home were two Norwegian immigrants, Karen (the late Katrin Cartlidge) and her sister-in-law Anethe (Vinessa Shaw). A third woman, Maren (Sarah Polley), Karen’s sister, had hidden in a sea cave. Louis (Ciarán Hinds), a former boarder in the women’s household, was found guilty of the crime and executed.

Jean suspects someone else did it; she also suspects that her husband, Thomas (Sean Penn), a renowned but dissolute poet, might be rhyming couplets with Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley, who spends most of her screen time either covering or uncovering her boobs), the girlfriend of his brother Rich (Josh Lucas). The two tales entwine in convoluted flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks, the outcome being as predictable and fascinating as a car crash in slow motion. More memorable are Penn’s Thomas, gnomic and washed-up, full of wry self-loathing, and Polley’s Maren, doll-like and lost, with eyes as ancient and uncomprehending as the rocks of Smuttynose Island. (114 minutes)

BY PETER KEOUGH

Issue Date: November 7 - 14, 2002
Back to the Movies table of contents.
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

home | feedback | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | the masthead | work for us

 © 2002 Phoenix Media Communications Group