Deep Water director Adrian Lyne reflects on decades of depicting sex on film

Across Flashdance, 9 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, and Unfaithful, Adrian Lyne chronicled—and defined—mainstream sexuality on film for almost 20 years. While other directors might have offered more transgressive, idiosyncratic, or explicit depictions during that time, Lyne’s films attracted audiences by the millions with their expert combination of visual style and ideas just provocative enough to generate discussion, whether the director was exploring the legitimacy (and talent needed) in sex work, or reckoning with infidelity at the intersections of emotional and later financial investment.

Another 20 years after Unfaithful, Lyne returns with Deep Water, an adaptation of the 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name that taps into ideas that have been around in literature and art since long before he started working—updated for the screen with some inventive and particularly timely twists. Lyne recently spoke to The A.V. Club about returning to the director’s chair for the first time in two decades, discussing what has changed in portraying sex and sexual relationships, and what hasn’t. He additionally explored some of the cultural shifts that have impacted his approach to storytelling over the years, and reflected on the lessons he’s learned about intimacy, relationships and human interactions, both on film and in real life.

The A.V. Club: Watching this movie, I was reminded of Phantom Thread and David Cronenberg’s Crash, where there’s a relationship dynamic that works for these two people, but probably doesn’t and maybe shouldn’t work for anyone else. In a story like this, do you look at it in terms of the conflict being the thing that keeps these two people together, or is it the reconciliation that makes them forget all of the volatility of those conflicts?

Adrian Lyne: I don’t think they’ll ever forget it. I don’t know whether you read the actual book, but it’s about a man who’s disenchanted with his wife because she’s fucking around, but he’s not interested in her sexually, and eventually he bumps the lovers off and then finally her. So what I tried to introduce was a complicity between them so that, for example, when he looks through the window at the party at the beginning of the movie, she knows he’ll be there. She gets a sense that he’ll be there so that there is a feeling a little bit like she’s doing this not only for herself but a little bit for him so that he is interested in her sexually. He’s jealous, obviously. He tries to deal with it, like in that scene where he’s putting lotion on her and he says, “I wish you’d get somebody with brains,” but within 30 seconds, he’s coming onto her and getting turned down. So you’ve got the dichotomy, which I think is interesting. And so that’s what really what the movie was about: jealousy and how to deal with it.

AVC: It feels like the dynamic between these two characters is very much defined by stretching their relationship to the breaking point and then pulling it back, or maybe even fully breaking it and then repairing it. How difficult was it to strike the right balance where the two of them were testing and tormenting one another and then reconciling?

AL: Jealousy obviously is an aphrodisiac. In some terms it’s arousing, but it’s also immensely destructive. And it’s interesting because [Ana] was saying while I was shooting, “They’re gonna hate me, they’re gonna hate me.” And in a sense, they will; she has a kid. But what I found interesting was that she is not only doing it for herself, but I wanted to get a sense that she’s doing it for him as well. So when he looks through that window at the beginning, she kind of knows he’ll be watching. I liked the idea, which is an eccentric scene, a scene when Charlie De Lisle is playing the piano, and she’s all infatuated with him and introducing him and excited and dancing, and then there’s a moment when she suddenly sees Vic and goes over to him. And I think for a moment, either she’s compassionate or she loves him, and that moment of sex when she comes onto him within the framework of the guy playing the piano, I thought was just so interesting that she, again, involves him in it.

AVC: There’s a point of no return for Vic where he actually follows through on these jealous instincts. Reasonably speaking, how do you guarantee that audiences stay not just invested, but kind of sympathetic to him? Is that Ben’s job or is that something that you can do in the storytelling to make sure that we’re still following and investing in his plight?

AL: One associates [Affleck] with more outgoing, ebullient characters, and I wanted the reverse, really. I wanted him to be vulnerable and almost introverted, and then you suddenly see the rage come out. So I wanted to him to almost have a childlike quality—something that he hadn’t done before, but I think he pulls it off. But by the end of the movie, I had to get ’em together or try and pull ’em together via the picnic and via her looking at that book that he did. Also, there’s a love scene I think that they’re nice in at the house. There’s a sweet moment when they both laughed. And I always wondered what was happening. It’s funny.

AVC: The sex scenes in this movie feel very different than I would say ’80s sex scenes in general—they have this urgency and they’re less picturesque and smoke-filled. Was that a byproduct of the material itself? Is it a changing approach or growing as a filmmaker? What helps you decide how to depict those kinds of moments?

AL: Well, I always think that that acres of flesh is really very un-erotic. What is erotic is “Did I see that or didn’t I?” That mystery, and not seeing things clearly, and quick enough to be tantalizing, but not rolling around in it.

AVC: How difficult is it to make a sexually charged film in 2022, particularly one in which the sexual dynamics are so actively nontraditional?

AL: This is on another movie, but I remember on Unfaithful, there was a feeling from the studio at that time that they had to have a bad marriage in order for the relationship to work. But there would’ve been no drama in that at all. What was interesting was the fact that it was a good marriage and she had no reason at all to fuck around, but she did. So I like the arbitrary thing of that. There was talk for a while about explaining this [in Deep Water], somehow getting a feeling that he let her do whatever she wanted, almost contractually if you like. And I thought that was a real pity, because I liked the idea that you’d be thrown into this relationship and have to try and float, try and work it out for yourself.

AVC: What is it about this intersection of sex and interpersonal relationships that has fascinated you enough to inject or explore that in your movies throughout much of your career?

AL: Well, I’ve always liked the little picture. I’ve always wanted to make a movie about you and me, and have the audience put their feet in the actors’ shoes vicariously and live through them, because for me that’s involving. I mean, I don’t actively search for the erotic, if you like, but it’s always a part of any relationship. I mean, how could it not be really? But it tends to be what people remember. You’ll make a film like Fatal Attraction, for example, and what people remember them doing is making out over the sink. It’s a minute out of a two-hour movie, but people I guess are interested in that, they remember it.

AVC: It feels like mainstream erotic cinema for all intents and purposes no longer exists, but at one point I feel like there were two tracks There was the travelogue memoir of the Emmanuelle films, and then there was the erotic thriller that became boilerplate with Body Heat. As a filmmaker, what can you do and what can’t you do three and a half decades after 9 1/2 Weeks that maybe you could do then?

AL: Well, I think it’s a little bit more uptight now. I mean, I remember when I made Fatal Attraction that before the love scene, [the actors] had a couple of drinks. [Michael Douglas] had some champagne, Glenn [Close] had some champagne, and it loosened them up and made it more fun, I think. It’s not like they were paralyzed. But now you can no more do that and fly to the moon and they’ll be worried about lawsuits. So it was a little bit more relaxed in those days.

However, what I did love was working digitally, which I’d never done. Before, I worked on film. And I was dreading that—I thought that I might be in trouble. But I loved it, because it gave you more spontaneity because it was quicker to light. You could light a scene in an hour, an hour-and-a-half rather than four hours. So I enjoyed doing that. And also I enjoyed the fact that I cut the thing remotely, which I was worried about. I thought “My god, how am I gonna do that?” But just looking at a screen and seeing a little picture of the editor like I’m seeing you now worked.

AVC: How do you feel like your understanding or how our collective understanding of the psychology of sexual attraction has changed in terms of what may be sensational or tantalizing now that then wasn’t, and vice versa?

AL: I find it very, very tough to isolate the sex. It’s part of a whole, it’s part of a story, part of a scene and so I find it a little difficult to isolate sex now versus the ’80s, versus whatever. I mean, you mentioned Body Heat, which is a marvelous film. I thought that had marvelous heat.

AVC: Over the years of making these movies about these relationships and these sexual dynamics, what have you learned as a person or as a filmmaker that either helps you tell these stories well, or maybe teaches you about things in your real life?

AL: Well, I think you have to do it with [the actors]. I think you have to give all of yourself, make a fool of yourself, go, “This is what I’ve got to offer. I’ve got nothing more. I’ll do anything for you.” And if they feel that quite often, you’ll get the same thing back. And I think one thing is really important, is that they have to feel free to fuck up. It doesn’t matter if they make a mistake, do another, do another, do 30 more [takes], but not in any way hold back. And so that’s my job, really, to try and achieve that.