The Atlantic Ocean fishing port of Ironbound Island suffers under an ancient curse from Viking lovers lost at sea: every fifty years the fish disappear, unless a young woman from the community can unravel the mystery – at her peril. Deeply begins when a young woman, Claire McKay (Julia Brendler), arrives at Ironbound, which has been struck by a fish drought. Claire has just lost her lover. She meets a woman, Celia (Lynn Redgrave), who is roughly fifty years older than Claire, and who tells the story of a young woman named Silly (Kirsten Dunst) who lived in Ironbound when it was struck by a fish drought in the past. Most of the film is in the form of a flashback to Celia’s story, which provides Claire with the catharsis she needs to survive her lost love.
If Deeply’s plot sounds hokey and predictable, well, that might be because it is.
You may notice, too, that the curse itself doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The Viking lovers cursed a nonexistent community when they should have cursed the weather. Someone forgot to balance the books at the karma bank when they wrote this fable. A more plausible and karmically valid explanation for the disappearance of fish, such as perhaps over-fishing, doesn’t even rate a mention. This might seem like nitpicking, or like I’m asking for too much realism in a fable. But that is precisely the problem with the movie: it works neither as fable nor as realistic drama. This film needed to go in one direction or the other, either by making the fable more fantastic or by making the realism more plausible. Balancing the two is a tricky proposition – one that is rarely pulled off successfully. Picnic at Hanging Rock is the only film that comes to mind that succeeds in balancing the two.
Better performances might have carried Deeply further, but here the film is again let down, this time by lead actresses who under- or over-act, and who are constantly slipping between different accents (Irish, Nova Scotian, German, southern American), unintentionally contributing to the placelessness of the fable.
The movie is redeemed to some extent by the beauty of the scenery and the pull of the love story. Ironbound is a real place – a windswept island off Nova Scotia that’s populated by hardy Celtic types living in quaint wooden buildings. It’s a great setting for this sort of story. And the story isn’t entirely lacking in appeal. The lead characters are attractive, and face numerous obstacles to the consummation of their love.
In the end, though, beautiful scenery and a compelling love story are not enough to overcome a predictable plot, mediocre acting and mangled accents.
