Comparing
British and American love stories, though I don't recall the last
Hollywood romance movie without crude, rude language , is almost like
comparing day and night. British romantic films are leisurely, getting
into who the characters are, less concerned with action, melodrama and
more with mood. "The Deep Blue Sea", based on a play written by Terence
Rattigan and produced on stage in 1952 was eventually made into a movie
starring Vivian Leigh. It has now been remade directed by Terence Davies
who adapted the play making changes and inventing different scenes but
keeping the basic story of a woman being caught between the devil and
the deep blue sea in a world after WW2.

Hester
(Rachel Weisz) is married to a man, Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell
Beale), 10 years older than she is who loves her more than she loves him
while she is more in love with Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston) then he is
in love with her, who is 10 years younger than she is. The movie opens
with her attempting suicide and goes back and forth in time showing what
has brought her to this point and what happens after.

Sir
William refuses to give Hester a divorce so she and Freddie start
living as Mr. & Mrs. Page in a rundown apartment building in a part
of London that still hasn't recovered from the blitz just as Freddie
believes he hit his peak in the RAF during the war. Hester is willing,
and does, sacrifice everything for Freddie, including her dignity, while
he plays golf and drinks at the pubs with his friends. Each of them in
the triangle fails the other, each wanting the same thing, love, but not
getting it from the one they want.

I
don't know if then, or now, every customer in a pub sings but then,
just as the heroine does, everyone smokes. The city is still eroding
from the effects of the war and everything around it is drab from the
buildings to the dress.

Rachel
Weisz is perfect as Hester showing a strength and vulnerability that
would allow for loving too much and at the same time attempting suicide.
Simon Russell Beale brings the gentleman's acceptance of his wife no
longer loving him while Tom Hiddleston  gives us the man who loves, but
not enough, to give up his single ways. Barbara Jefford as Sir William's
mother and Ann Mitchell as the landlady where Hester and Freddie live
both add strong characters representing the upper class and lower middle
class women of the time.

Terence
Davies' cuts out the underlying homosexual themes to add writing and
directorial things of his own but he allows Weisz in love or in despair
as much of the screen and time that she needs to good effect.

Concerto
for Violin and Orchestra, composed by Samuel Barber, is at times
perfect back ground music while at other times very intrusive. Would
everyone in a bar know the words to "You Belong To Me" as recorded by Jo
Stafford? Okay sometimes British films, like Hollywood films, bend the
rules.