Deep End (1970)
Starring: Jane Asher, John Moulder-Brown, Diana Dors, Burt Kwouk, Karl Michael Vogler, Christopher Sandford
Directed by: Jerzy Skolimowski
Rating: 
After 40 years in the cinematic wilderness, Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End is back on the big screen. A fascinating period piece, it is both very much of its time, and yet, in its stylish and at times surreal depiction of adolescent angst, ahead of the game.
Its time is 1970, when skirts were short, boots were kinky, and sexual harassment in the workplace was an occupational hazard – or indeed a 'perk'. Our hero, Mike (John Moulder-Brown), is a 15-year-old school leaver who finds a job at his local swimming baths – and this was back in the day when people actually came to the pool to perform their monthly ablutions. Showing him the ropes is sassy co-worker Sue (Jane Asher – who knew the cosy cake queen was so luminously beautiful back in the day?). A tease and a flirt, she's engaged to one man while sleeping with another – something Mike, who of course falls madly in love with her, has difficulty assimilating.
Caught between the sexual liberation of the '60s and the feminist movement of the '70s, Sue is sick of the men in her life 'pawing her', yet uses sex as a currency to buy her way to a better life. In fact, sex is entirely equated with money in the movie, as Mike flashes the cash in pursuit of his beloved in a bizarre, heady night in Soho, yet avoids an encounter with a blousy prostitute in favour of hotdogs served up by The Pink Panther's Burt Kwouk. (Told you it was bizarre...)
A curious mix of grimy reality and haunting beauty, the film is both a coming of age love story and a horror film in the making: as Mike's obsession with Sue escalates, so does an uneasy sense of undefined menace, and it's not really a spoiler to say that things are destined to go horribly wrong.
If you get the chance to see this slice of 1970s (sex) life, take it. Delightfully dated yet timelessly familiar, prosaic yet poetic, it's well worth taking the plunge...