Sexually charged psychological thrillers are English director Adrian Lyne’s trademark. The creative mind behind “9 1/2 Weeks” to “Indecent Proposal” – and above all “Fatal Attraction” – has brought some of the most discussed thrillers to the cinema world.
Now, after a 20-year hiatus, Lyne is back with another steamy tale of spousal infidelity, Deep Water, starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas.
The couple briefly dated in real life, albeit hopefully with less gruesome consequences than in the film, where Armas’ character drives her husband insane with flagrant affairs.
“When I cast her, I did a test at my house in LA,” Lyne told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in an interview via Zoom.
“I didn’t know much about Ana … but when I saw her working with Ben, I could immediately see that the chemistry was there. It’s not about him or her, it’s about them together.”
Ben Affleck in a still from the official trailer for director Adrian Lyne’s “Deep Water.”
“Complicated Emotions”
One thing that has changed since Lyne was last behind the camera is the presence of intimacy coordinators who try to make sex scenes more comfortable for the actors.
“I was kind of horrified by the idea,” admitted Lyne.
“I don’t like the suggestion that there’s a lack of trust between the actors and the director. If you don’t have that, you have nothing. I must die for them and they must die for me.”
The hardest struggle, however, was maintaining the film’s unsettling tone: “Often the instinct of the studios is to iron out the imperfections in a script, but those are often the most interesting parts,” said Lyne.
“I wanted to make a film where there’s some kind of complicity between them. This is not a happy, conventional marriage.
Ana de Armas in a still from the official trailer for director Adrian Lyne’s Deep Water.
“Incredibly destructive”
The real issue is jealousy, he said, “which is such a complicated emotion — obviously it’s incredibly destructive, but there’s an erotic side too.”
Lyne has been married for almost 50 years, so should his wife be worried about his involvement in the subject (his last film was Unfaithful with Richard Gere)?
“She was sitting right next to me, so I have to be careful,” he said, laughing.
“I don’t know why I make them endless. It sounds cheesy, but I like films where you can put yourself in the actor’s shoes. I can appreciate ‘Dune’ or ‘Matrix’ or whatever, but I much prefer smaller images of you and me.”
There’s also no particular reason why Lyne has been gone for two decades — it’s just the reality of filmmaking, where projects can take years to get funded and sometimes collapse at the last minute.
He is determined not to wait so long for the next one.
“I can’t wait another 20 years,” he says, laughing again. “I would be 100!”
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