Deep End

A film set in a London bathhouse. Mike is fifteen. He has left school and takes a job at a public baths. The work is strange. The men's and women's sides are separate; the attendants scrub customers, bring towels, and turn a blind eye to various things for tips. Susan works there. She is in her twenties, sardonic, and teases the boy from the first day. Mike becomes obsessed with her. From there the film turns into a story of watching. He follows her in the street, finds her fiancé, goes into a cinema, and follows as far as a nightclub. Susan's life is untidy. She has a fiancé and also an affair with a games teacher from a school. When Mike learns this he does not know what to do. As the jealousy grows his behaviour becomes both funny and frightening. In a nightclub scene he steals a cardboard cut-out. The scene begins absurdly and ends somewhere nobody expects. What the narrative is interested in is not love but not knowing which way to go: the boy does not know how anything is done and there is nobody around to tell him. The use of colour is marked. The green and yellow tiles of the baths, a red coat and blue water; every scene is built on a single colour. The ending takes place at the pool and changes the tone in one move. The film is set in London but was shot in Munich; most of the interiors were built in Germany. The music is by Cat Stevens and Can. The director supplied the closing song's last line and the song took its title from it. Jane Asher, John Moulder-Brown, Karl Michael Vogler and Diana Dors are in the cast. Jerzy Skolimowski directed and co-wrote. Who it is for: anyone who likes European cinema of the 1970s and uncomfortable stories about the young. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to identify with the main character; the boy's behaviour becomes steadily indefensible and the film does that deliberately.