Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, until Thu 15 Dec

Terence Davies / UK / 2011 / 98 mins

Terence Davies is famed for the classic look borne out of his low budget period films. After eleven years since his last feature film, Davies returns with The Deep Blue Sea, a harrowing film based on the turmoil of unrequited love. Sadly however, there is something underwhelming about this film, as it appears he has made various cut backs in order to create an almost ethereal piece of art. Told from the perspective of Hester (Rachel Weisz) ‘some time around 1950’, we watch through the gauze of cigarette smoke as she struggles to get to grips with her new life as a divorcee, a hardship which she will have to get used to as her impulsive personality sees her following her heart rather than her head.

Based on Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play, The Deep Blue Sea almost feels like an exaggerated melodrama. Every emotion is heightened, and whether it is love or loss each character feels, the passion at their core is ferociously moving. What Davies fails to put forward however is the taboo subject of infidelity and the shocking moment when a woman leaves her husband in 1950s Britain. And really, this is what creates a vacuum surrounding Weisz’s character; she appears to be childlike and ungrateful and it becomes understandable why her new young lover is doubtful of their future. In many ways, The Deep Blue Sea is a brave film which emphasises the painful side of spontaneous love, but unlike Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, the action is never fully developed enough to understand and sympathise with every characters’ motives.