The Weight of Water (2000)
(In French, On TV, June 2019) I came to The Weight of Water with expectations that were far too high. As one of the few movies I still hadn’t seen from director Kathryn Bigelow, I was really looking forward to it. Bigelow has a long track record of entertaining movies, but The Weight of Water is something else. Despite a murder mystery and a cast headlined by Sean Penn and Elizabeth Hurley, it turns out to be a disappointing bore. The premise has to do with a modern photographer investigating a centuries-old murder mystery, with the movie flashing back to the earlier era to show us what happened. Or may have happened, or what they wished had happened—it’s that kind of film where the first act goes so deep into fantasy that anything may happen and it would be infuriating if we hadn’t stopped caring well before that point. The narration across two centuries doesn’t really bring anything together, the drama seems to repeat itself endlessly even in a relatively short picture and the film is far duller than the director’s reputation may suggest. The irritating overblow cinematography does nothing to make the film any less lifeless or uninteresting. Yes, I dozed off at some point and didn’t feel I had missed anything—I certainly did not feel as if I had to rewind and re-watch. I’m glad I’m a bit more of a Bigelow completist now, but not that happy about The Weight of Water itself.