the perfect
mother
by Douglas Messerli
Scott McGehee and David Siegel
(screenplay, based on the novel by Elizabeth Sanxay and the film by Max Ophuls,
The Reckless Moment), Scott McGehee
and David Siegel (directors) The
Deep End / 2001
The gay directorial team of Scott
McGehee and David Siegel chose in 2001 to rewrite Max Ophul’s woman’s’
melodrama, The Reckless Moment,
producing in The Deep End a credible
and skilled film production, which, although it had long been part of our large
DVD collection, I had not seen until other day, after viewing their less
successful What Maisie Knew.
By shifting the Ophuls’ film into a
contemporary story where—instead of a young girl dating an older man, we have
an almost underage gay boy, Beau (Jonathan Tucker) under the emotional influence
of a sleazy 30-year- old owner of a Reno gay bar called The Deep End, Darby
Reese (Raymond J. Barry)—we immediately recognize it today as a far more
problematic situation—or perhaps we should simply say it better helps us to
comprehend the difficult situation with which the original version’s mother,
Joan Bennett, had to deal when faced with her teenage daughter Bea’s dominance
by the older man of The Reckless Moment, Ted
Darby.
The utterly loving mother in this film,
played brilliantly by Tilda Swinton (as Margaret Hall), is clearly not so
disconcerted that she has discovered her son’s homosexuality, as that he has
linked up with such a despicable being, who, having also introduced her son to
alcohol, has been partially responsible for a recent accident, wherein Beau has
been arrested—perhaps with the drunken Darby sitting next to him in the front
seat.
In the very first scene of the film, we
see the level-headed Margaret knocking at the door of the Reno gay
establishment, demanding to see Reese, who she demands must stop seeing her
teenage son. He, apparently, is willing to do so for a payment of $5,000,
which, when she confronts Beau about his offer, the troubled and, surely, duped
young boy refuses to believe; Reese has already telephoned him even before
Margaret has been able to return home.
Although Beau refuses to discuss the
relationship with him, despite her attempts to openly talk about it Margaret
pushes on, dealing, despite her Navy husband’s absence (he is stationed
somewhere on a distant military ship), with another son and daughter, cooking
the family meals, and, with other friends, chauffeuring the younger children
between their school, soccer, ballet, and other activities. Swinton plays this
contemporary-mother role with great aplomb, refusing to turn it into melodrama,
while representing her character’s personality, nonetheless, with a steely, if
nearly impossible, managing of what it takes to me a liberated woman. If, in
the original, we perceive Joan Bennett, as I have argued, as an isolated woman,
protected in her suburban culture from all of the urban pressures of nearby Los
Angeles, here, in the glorious environs of Tahoe Lake, Margaret is put-upon by
nearly everything. And she cannot even reach her husband to discuss her
emotional and, later, real-life
dilemmas. And, in this respect, like
Ophuls’ original film, this is very much a woman’s story, despite its early gay
perspective.
McGehee and Siegal almost convince us that the two are part and parcel
of the same thing: a caring, dominant mother and a missing father surely have
encouraged the confused young son seek out some emotional replacements in his
life, and Reese may, despite his despicable qualities, be an attempt to find
the seemingly always missing father’s love.
Fortunately, the directors do not attempt to psychoanalyze their
characters. Mostly these figures, despite their familial love, simply cannot
communicate with one another; they are all too confused, too hurt, and too much
in love.
But that condition, of course, also results in misconceptions for all
involved, and creates the intense drama of the film’s plot. When Beau is
visited late-night by Reese at his home, he attempts to quiet his lover with
a visit to the boathouse, where he challenges him about his love and questions
the older man about his mother’s accusations. Discovering that, indeed, his
mother has told him the truth, and that he has, in fact, taken her up on her
offer of money to keep him away, even the believing Beau recognizes something
is “rotten in Denmark,” and pulls away from the older man, who hurt by the
young man’s refusal, attempts to punish him. Like the fight between the young
girl in Ophuls’ film and the older man, Reese is slightly stunned (both physically
and psychologically) by his violent rejection, and, after Beau leaves him, he
stumbles out to the pier, only to fall into a rotting fence into the water
below, killing him (in both stories, improbably, he falls into an old anchor
which impales him, and I do not comprehend why McGehee and Siegel had not
attempted to update that absurd situation).
Beau, knowing nothing of the aftermath, returns to his room, like any
ruffled teenager, refusing to discuss any of the events he has just undergone.
So, accordingly, when the next morning his mother discovers the horrible
accident and the body, she can only presume—or perhaps one should say, she
tragically and mistakenly, assumes the worse: her son has killed his aggressor.
Of course, that is the problem; although Reese has, indeed, become an
aggressor, it is only because of her actions that he has become a “dangerous”
one. But neither movie feels open to really discuss that. Margaret, after all,
is also an innocent, who cannot easily comprehend the complex events she has
just encountered. Her instincts are those of a loving mother: get rid of the
evidence. And with a remarkable resilience and almost fantastic ability, she
manages to pull the body into a nearby speed boat, and toss him off into a
removed spot, later even returning to that spot, nearly drowning in the
attempt, to retrieve his car keys so that she might move the victim’s car to a
far-away location.
Oh the impossibilities of being a model mother! For moments after she
has accomplished the “murdered” man’s ocean burial, but she has to curry her
daughter and younger son to their current events as she is, simultaneously,
visited by the surely evil Alek Spera (Goran Višnjić) demanding $50,000 in
blackmail for a porno film between her son Beau and the dead man, which, if
turned over to the police, will surely involve him in the disappearance—and,
more frighteningly, the murder of Reese—whose body has now been discovered by
police.
What’s a good mother to do? And, if nothing else, Margaret is the
perfect mother, attempting to get loans (which if her husband were there, would
be no problem) and remove monies from their joint accounts (always needing the
missing husband’s signature)—all of which further reveals these director’s
quite feminist perspectives. No one can help a busy woman, a mother, a
housewife, to deal with such life-altering changes; only a man can accomplish
it, evidently, in the sexist society in which even 2001 she lived—despite her
endless and startling accomplishments.
Strangely, only her blackmailer, Spera, seems to comprehend her
situation, trying, despite threats on his own life, to negotiate a smaller deal
with his handler, Nagel. It is only fate, an accident which kills Nagel and,
moments later, Spera himself, whom Margaret tries to comfort in his last death
throes, that ends in her and her family’s salvation.
Beau, resilient as most children are, has applied for a music
scholarship at Wesleyan, and will probably receive it (he has been asked for 2
trumpet on-line recitals). At movie’s end, the telephone rings out once again;
this time, presumably, reporting on news from the ever-missing husband,
suggesting that the normality of society is about to return. Yet, of course,
one must question, what will that “normality” consist of? Surely the memories
which the entire family must now face—sublimated or still present—may never be
erased. And, in that respect, like Ophuls’ film, the McGehee and Siegel work is
a kind of American tragedy about which no one dare speak.
Los Angeles, September 21, 2016
Reprinted as World Cinema Review (September 2016).
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