The Deep Blue Sea
Music Box Films | Release Date: March 23, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
1
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 29, 2012
Rachel Weisz - in what has to be the performance of her career, and there have been lots of good ones - plays an intelligent woman in the grip of a lust that's too big to handle or suppress. She can either ride the tiger or be devoured. Read full review
100
TimeRichard CorlissMar 24, 2012
The movie is a museum of emotions, brought to contemporary life through the director's artistry and his leading lady's fire. Here, they show us, is how people felt, and hurt, in another time. Their love and pain can touch us today. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriMar 24, 2012
The Deep Blue Sea is not a showy or pronounced movie. Open yourself up to it, however, and it might destroy you. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMar 22, 2012
To put the matter perhaps more abstractly than such a sensual film deserves, it is about the fate of untameable, irrational desire in a world that does not seem to have a place for it. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMar 22, 2012
Exceptionally well-made and completely fearless in its depiction of the widest range of romantic emotions, this is a film as fiercely committed to passion as its heroine, and that's saying a lot. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasMar 21, 2012
There's a suffocating air to The Deep Blue Sea that makes it harder to access than other period romances of its kind, but Davies aligns himself wholly with Hester. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumMar 21, 2012
In this typically exquisite, nuanced, memory-infused work from master British filmmaker Terence Davies, we believe every minute of the torment of Hester (Rachel Weisz). Read full review
91
Christian Science MonitorAndy KleinMar 23, 2012
A fine example of a director bringing just enough of his style to revitalize possibly dated material. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 12, 2012
The beautiful misery of The Deep Blue Sea - Terence Davies' crushing adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1952 play - is almost too much. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertMar 28, 2012
The film most of all is about Hester, who stares out the window and smokes. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 26, 2012
The only flaw here is the score. It's beautiful but so obtrusive, particularly at the start, that it threatens to turn the proceedings into melodrama. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesMar 29, 2012
Davies adapted a classic 1952 play by Terence Rattigan, whose centenary is being celebrated in Britain this year, and though you might have trouble sorting out the film's competing levels of authorship, one element attributable solely to Davies is the strategic use of music and quiet on the soundtrack. Read full review
80
NPRJeannette CatsoulisMar 23, 2012
Propriety and recklessness make for uneasy bedfellows in The Deep Blue Sea, a shimmering exploration of romantic obsession and the tension between fitting in and flying free. Read full review
80
Village VoiceNick PinkertonMar 20, 2012
Plumbing disquieting depth, Deep Blue Sea investigates the insoluble dilemma of romantic love: the expectation, contrary to experience, that we can or will find every quality that we want in a single person. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfMar 20, 2012
It's the stuff of melodrama, heightened by Davies's pitch-perfect use of pop songs, like a sad "You Belong to Me," slurred by a misty crowd in a bar. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid DenbyMar 19, 2012
Sex is the subtext of everything that happens, yet this may be one of the least erotic movies ever made. It's stern and noble, very much in the Rattigan spirit. [26 March 2012, p.108]
80
VarietyLeslie FelperinMar 18, 2012
Davies is in fine form here, with luminous performances, especially from Rachel Weisz, rounding out a classy package whose only major problem is it may be a bit too true to its period sensibility and legit origins. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 18, 2012
Rachel Weisz performs with enormous intelligence and restraint. Read full review
80
EmpireDamon WiseMar 16, 2012
This isn't traditional heritage cinema and it may not tickle the same taste buds that devoured "Tinker Tailor" or "The King's Speech." It does, however, represent the unique vision of an artist who needs to be met halfway, and in an age of hubbub, its patient elegance is a rare thing we should nurture. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenApr 12, 2012
Happily, in his adaptation of the Terence Rattigan play, The Deep Blue Sea, Davies has found a setting close to his heart and a subject more nearly suited to his style. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisMar 29, 2012
Rachel Weisz has become an exquisite camera artist. In a single shot, she can open up a whole movie. The Deep Blue Sea has a scene like that. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickMar 23, 2012
The image that sticks with you here is a smoky pub where the patrons are singing "You Belong to Me.'' Read full review
75
MovielineStephanie ZacharekMar 22, 2012
There's such a thing as having too much reverence for your material, and although Davies is an extraordinarily gifted and principled director, The Deep Blue Sea may suffer for that reverence. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversMar 22, 2012
The film is a striking cinematic tone poem. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedMar 21, 2012
It is quirky, dark, much maligned by feminists and too slow for some tastes, but it's a work worth seeing again, and Ms. Weisz is wonderful in it. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineBill WeberMar 19, 2012
Its director's romantic sensibilities wed to Terrence Rattigan's 60-year-old play, this period drama is buoyed by Rachel Weisz's poignant embodiment of a bourgeois wife seeking erotic autonomy. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMar 18, 2012
As intensely personal and deeply felt as it is, however, Davies' attempt to breathe new life into Rattigan's 1952 play is a rather bloodless, suffocating thing, lent tragic passion more by its use of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto than by anything achieved by his star Rachel Weisz and her leading man. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie OgleMar 22, 2012
The Deep Blue Sea is a suffocating movie, and it's meant to be. Read full review
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