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Deep Water (2022)
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With Deep Water, filmmaker Adrian Lyne returns from a 20-year hiatus with another offering in the “erotic thriller” genre. While many of Lyne’s films feature loads of sexually-charged, dangerous, even homicidal affairs that seem so melodramatic that they could only be dreamed up in Hollywood, you might be surprised to learn that many of them are actually adapted from other source material, and one of them, 9 1/2 Weeks, is based on a true story, a memoir by Elizabeth MacNeill. So is Deep Water also based on a true story?
What is Deep Water about?
Deep Water is the story of Vic and Melinda Van Allen, played by Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, a wealthy, unhappily married couple with an agreement: Melinda is allowed to cheat on Vic but she’s not allowed to leave him, for the sake of their daughter. Even though Vic has agreed to this arrangement, he finds perverse pleasure in messing with Melinda’s sidepieces: he has this habit of threatening her lovers and telling them he may have killed the last guy she slept with. Vic’s threats seem empty and false, but eventually, one of Melinda’s lovers winds up dead and Vic seems a likely suspect. Oh, and Vic’s only true friends are some snails he keeps in an aquarium.
Is Deep Water based on a true story?
Deep Water is an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1957 novel of the same name. Highsmith is the author of several books that have been turned into films, including Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, but there is nothing in Deep Water that is based on anything but Highsmith’s imagination.
It should be noted though, that Highsmith, like Vic’s character in the film, did raise her own snails, keeping them as pets and breeding them. Snails show up throughout her work, but perhaps most prominently in her short story The Snail Watcher and the novel Deep Water. Vic’s appreciation for these small mollusks might have mirrored Highsmith’s own affection for them, but beyond that, it seems Vic and Melinda’s story is purely fictional.
