The two films today can be streamed on Amazon Prime, and they’re both curious studies of how love can be seen as a battlefield - where the rules of engagement can vary.
Cyrano (Amazon Prime) - From what I understand, this was first a musical written by Erica Schmidt in 2018, and was staged with Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett playing the lead roles - Schmidt is Dinklage’s wife. Naturally, it was based on the 1897 dramatic play of Edmund Rostand, and it’s a treatise on unrequited love that we’ve seen played out in many permutations throughout its history. My favorite was the modern retelling that was entitled Roxanne (1987), and starred Steve Martin with a prosthetic nose, and Daryl Hannah. Haley Bennett is the wife of celebrated Director Joe Wright, and so we get this double passion project of a film - and off the bat, I can say it’s gorgeously shot, is a stirring period film, and does its best to resonate with modern audiences - the casting of Dinklage being one of the strong factors here.
The nagging question for me though is whether it works as well as it should have. Are the action sequences that involve Dinklage convincing? Up to the point when he’s seen as the playwright and resident poet of the theater in the town they live in, all seems fine, and much is made of his military exploits. But as we’re asked to witness these exploits, and his prowess with blades, it might seem like we’re stretching credulity. Bennett is far more convincing as a modern-day woman trapped in a specific historical time; and she makes the most of the role - both beguiling and besotted by the man she believes she’s in love with at first sight. The singing is more modern than of the period, and that’s fine - but they aren’t very memorable, and that isn’t good. There’s really only one song, as sung by Christian, that bears recalling.
Deep Water (Amazon Prime) - Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley), and directed by Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal), and you’d have high hopes for this domestic drama that stars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. But the Highsmith story is transplanted to Louisiana USA, and let’s not forget that Lyne is pushing it in terms of age now. So I don’t know what kind of control he had on the acting; but this is more like another example of Affleck sleepwalking through a film, and letting his clenched jaw do all the acting. I’ve watched and enjoyed Armas in Knives Out and the last Daniel Craig Bond film, so I’m just wondering why they said Yes to this role, when there’s more she can offer when given the chance.
The film deals with promiscuity of a trophy wife, and the seeming indifference the rich husband displays towards her behavior. The nagging questions being left in our minds is whether it’s some strange game the two are actually playing by design, whether she’s really that promiscuous, and whether his seeming indifference is real. Affleck’s character sound off veiled threats and cryptic remarks, and the point of the film is to bring us down a rabbit hole of whether the threats and remarks bear any weight. The problem is that at some point in the film, I stopped caring. There’s a daughter in the film, a minor character who’s cute and doted on by Affleck’s character, and basically ignored by her mother - and when the end credits consist of outtakes of her lip-synching to a 70’s pop hit, you kinda know we were in trouble from the start.