Vic can’t keep up on his bike, so he takes a shortcut through the woods, hoping to catch up to Don.

After finding Tony’s wallet hidden in Vic’s basement, Melinda called Don and sent him after Vic, and began preparing to leave home with their daughter Trixie (Grace Jenkins).ĭon sees Tony’s body and flees to his car. Vic returns the next day on his bike, but doesn’t realize that he’s been followed by the local busybody Don (Tracy Letts), who’s convinced he killed Charlie. After returning to the gorge for a picnic, though, he spots the body once again: It’s floated back to the surface, and he’ll have to come back to make sure it vanishes for good. Vic takes Tony’s wallet, drags his body into the nearby gorge, and weighs him down with rocks before returning home. Later, another “friend” of Melinda’s, Charlie (Jacob Elordi), drowns in a pool after a night of partying - and Vic was the last person who saw him alive.įinally, the film explicitly shows Vic murder Melinda’s old flame Tony (Finn Wittrock), with whom she’s recently reconnected, in a remote location in the woods. The story - which Affleck delivers without a hint of levity - soon circulates through their social set, and though Vic claims he was joking, the audience is left wondering. How does Deep Water end?Įarly on in the film version of Deep Water, Vic tells Melinda’s latest fling, Joel (Brendan Miller), that he killed one of his wife’s former “friends,” a man named Malcolm McRae. Read on to find out more about how the ending of Deep Wate r compares to that of Highsmith’s book. The film and the novel also diverge in important ways as they reach their dramatic conclusions. In a midcentury setting, Vic’s willingness to allow his wife to pursue affairs outside of their marriage makes more sense than it does in the film, where divorce feels like an obvious option for the unhappy couple. In order to understand the tormented relationship at the heart of Highsmith’s Deep Water, it’s necessary to consider its cultural context: an era when divorce was much rarer than it is today, and still considered deeply shameful. But Highsmith also wrote about the misery of marriage and the suburbs in novels like Deep Water and Edith’s Diary. The film is based on a 1957 novel by iconic suspense writer Patricia Highsmith, best known for her Tom Ripley novels and for the lesbian romance The Price of Salt, which was adapted into the film Carol.

Vic seems to simply endure Melinda’s dalliances, but as the film progresses, his darker side begins to emerge. Their relationship should be perfect - they have a beautiful home and an adorable young daughter - but Melinda’s series of overt affairs with younger men has poisoned their marriage. The film stars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas as Vic and Melinda Van Allen, a wealthy couple living in New Orleans, Louisiana. The threat of danger lurks beneath the surface of Deep Water, the new erotic thriller from director Adrian Lyne.

Patricia highsmith novel deep water