McRae’s body eventually is discovered in the woods, and while Highsmith’s novel solved that crime and cleared Vic, the screenplay here - or maybe the desperate attempt to inject some suspense in the edit - keeps things murky. One of her recent flings, Malcolm McRae, has gone missing, and without even cracking a smile, Vic scares off her new plaything Joel (Brendan C. That applies even when he’s being humiliated by the flagrant extramarital forays of his wife, Melinda (de Armas), with a string of men, the younger and dumber the better.

It’s ideal streaming fare since you can check your Twitter feed, do Wordle, go online shopping, hell, probably make a grilled cheese sandwich without much danger of getting left behind by the lethargic plotting.Īffleck plays brooding tech entrepreneur Vic Van Allen, who scowls a lot as he furiously cycles around town like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, but mostly just looks bored or constipated. So the film has been gathering dust since its originally scheduled November 2020 release date, shifting twice before eventually being bumped to Hulu for domestic and Amazon internationally.

Lyne’s take on the material, scripted without distinction by Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, manages to drain all the subtlety and psychological complexity from Highsmith’s story of marital warfare, transgression and obsession.Įrotic thrillers are hardly on-brand for Disney, which acquired the New Regency title in the Fox merger. Never a director to say no to a dangerous woman who’s a magnet for trouble, he tackles the 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel that was previously filmed in a 1981 French version titled Eaux Profondes, with Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant, and then adapted for German television two years later. Lyne, once a prime purveyor of glossy titillation pulp like 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal, has been absent since his comparatively classy 2002 entry, Unfaithful. Screenwriters: Zach Helm, Sam Levinson, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith Cast: Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Lil Rey Howery, Dash Mihok, Finn Wittrock, Kristen Connolly, Jacob Elordi, Rachel Blanchard

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