Deep Water

It’s never clear to what extent the social-climbing protagonists in Deep Water love one another, but it’s certain that moviegoers won’t share affection for either of them.

Exploring familiar themes of deception and betrayal, this muddled if mildly provocative adaptation of a novel by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley) tends to be tawdry and shallow where it should be intriguing and suspenseful.

Instead, it’s watered down to fit a standard erotic thriller framework that lacks the necessary sizzle and ironic self-awareness, and never fulfills its twisty Hitchcockian ambitions.

As we’re introduced to retired New Orleans tech mogul Vic (Ben Affleck) and his young psychiatrist wife Melinda (Ana de Armas), we immediately sense that their relationship has been rocky for a while.

Their marriage is awash in promiscuity, fueled by the free-spirited Melinda’s drunk flirtations and the calculating Vic’s wandering eyes. Mutual suspicion and jealousy contribute to the rut, with hints of more sinister goings-on beneath the surface.

They might be staying together for the sake of their young daughter (Grace Jenkins), or maybe it’s because they are addicted to the constant psychological warfare. For example, Vic chases away one of Melinda’s young male patients (Brendan Miller) by claiming credit for an unsolved murder with chilling nonchalance. Later, a piano teacher (Jacob Elordi) and one of Melinda’s former flings (Finn Wittrock) each inadvertently slide into Vic’s vengeful crosshairs.

Meanwhile, the couple exudes a wealthy arrogance and a dismissive derision for anyone not in their inner circle, drawing the ire of a writer (Tracy Letts) whose wife (Kristen Connolly) finds Vic’s charms alluring.

The material is well within the comfort zone of veteran British director Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction), whose first project in two decades didn’t warrant coming out of retirement.

The screenplay by Zach Helm (Stranger Than Fiction) and Sam Levinson (“Euphoria”) offers a frothy updating of the 1957 source material in which some of the dialogue sparks to life with an amusing yet unsettling mix of witty banter and mean-spirited mind games.

Affleck and de Armas (Knives Out) generate an appropriately adversarial chemistry for such extremely unsympathetic characters. However, without much meaningful emotional depth or narrative sophistication, Deep Water drowns in coincidences and cloudy motives.

Rated R, 115 minutes.