The Weight of Water (2002)

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Starring Sarah Polley, Sean Penn, Catherine McCormack, Elizabeth Hurley, Josh Lucas, Ciarán Hinds, Vinessa Shaw, Katrin Cartlidge, Anders W. Berthelsen, Ulrich Thomsen, Richard Donat. [R]

Dreary, muddled drama splits it time between present-day tale of journalist McCormack researching a based-in-truth murder story off the coast of New Hampshire dating back over a century and the past events leading up to the murders and execution of the accused killer. McCormack suspects her husband (Penn) is lusting for his brother’s girlfriend (Hurley), while the eventual survivor of the killings (Polley) feels incestuous and sapphic stirrings for her own brother and his wife, respectively, but the movie’s morose, tortured mood dampens any kind of soapy or erotic charge that might have made something jump off the screen. Alas, everyone is locked in by their inhibitions, and director Kathryn Bigelow treats it all with sterile solemnity, perhaps a byproduct of overcorrection when given something more “serious” than the thrillers and action flicks she was known for. Fundamentally defeated by the parallels between the two timelines being murky at best—the stories simply don’t interlock, dramatically or thematically, and the resolution of the older story offers no meaning or insight into the modern one. Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival almost a full two years prior to its commercial release (Bigelow’s next film, K-19: The Widowmaker, was shot and released during the interim).

42/100