Deep End

Deep End is one of a number of Skolimowski’s films set in England, but this England was, in fact, constructed in Hamburg. Mike, a boy from a working class family, after finishing school finds a job in the public baths/swimming pool in Fulham, London. There he becomes interested in Susan, who is slightly older than him and has been working in the baths for several years. Soon the interest changes into obsession, which Susan tries manipulating for her advantage. However, in the end it leads to tragedy for both characters.
Despite its modest budget and largely improvised script, Deep End turned out to be one of the best films in Skolimowski’s career, short of being his masterpiece. With its focus on a disorientated, naive young man entering the cynical adult world, it perfectly fits Skolimowski’s oeuvre. Moreover, the director excellently shows here, as he did earlier in Le départ (1966), that consumption governs the lives of Westerners and that it is a complex discursive system: it operates in ‘chains’. Deep End can also be seen in the context of the ‘Swinging London’ films, due to catching the pleasures and dangers of living in this city at the end of the 1960s. Jane Asher, cast as Susan, a typical ‘Soho bitch’, was at the time one of the symbols of ‘Swinging London’. She plays Susan excellently, with the right measure of cynicism and vulnerability.

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