Not to be confused with 1999 shark movie Deep Blue Sea, The Deep Blue Sea is a 2011 drama about a married woman (Rachel Weisz) who suffers a fate worse than Samuel L Jackson after falling in love with Tom Hiddleston.

Terence Davies squeezes all the life out out Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play, squashing its complex and layered characters into unlikeable putty for purely aesthetic reasons. Weisz is younger than the original character, diluting the story of an older woman being in love with a man who is basically a child, and the psychological reasons someone trapped in a joyless marriage might have taken the bait.

Davies never gives her a life beyond her love for Loki, removing all her personality traits (including the fact she is a painter) to focus solely on her infatuation with Freddie (Hiddleston), who is also reduced to a stock cad character. Pitching the drama at an emotional and visual monotone makes it impossible to care about their plight, with none of the wit, depth of character or emotional dynamics on display in the stage version currently playing in London with Green Wing‘s Tamsin Greig; an expert in being condescended to by childish men.

Depressing and dispassionate, this is a very different beast to both the Rattigan play and Jackson flick; where sharks never stop moving, the film never really starts.