The Weight of Water

Description

Elizabeth Hurley, Josh Lucas, Sean Penn. Two couples journey to an isolated island manor to investigate a century-old double murder, believing that the real murderer has escaped justice-while jealousy and betrayal begin to separate them. 2000/color/113 min/R/widescreen.
This complicated mystery, directed with passionate intensity by Katherine Bigelow (Near Dark), deserves better than the paltry distribution it received in theaters. Granted, it’s a tough sell: a contrast between the emotional unrest in a group of modern travelers and a hundred-year-old murder case on a desolate New England island. A photographer (Catherine McCormack) is researching the old case, and we flip back and forth between time periods as she uncovers new clues. The parallel-story structure is often tricky to pull off in movies, and Bigelow, working from the Anita Shreve novel, doesn’t entirely solve it here. But the old mystery, set in a strict Norwegian community, is compelling, and the cast is stronger than the material: Sarah Polley and the late Katrin Cartlidge are stand-outs in the 1873 scenes, and Sean Penn (believably insufferable) and Elizabeth Hurley flirt naughtily in the modern. –Robert Horton