The 1949 Max Ophuls masterpiece The Reckless Moment was about a middle-class woman who conceals the corpse of her daughter's unsavory lover and then must cope with a blackmailer. The blackmailer has a romantic streak and falls in love with her, but then his more ruthless partner-in-crime steps in and drives the plot to the inevitable showdown.

Written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, this remake changes the daughter to a gay son but otherwise follows the original so closely that comparisons are inevitable. In every respect but one, The Deep End is inferior to its model. McGehee and Siegel wisely forgo any attempt to reproduce Ophuls's exhilarating style, but they have nothing to offer in its place except a gleaming, water-themed æstheticism involving rampant turquoise décor and too many dissolves. The one great strength of this sluggish, implausible film is Tilda Swinton's delicate performance as the heroine -- poised and cool enough to make me not miss Joan Bennett, who starred in the original. Goran Visnjic, on the other hand, is so far from James Mason he isn't even George Clooney. At the Avon.