James
More is a lot like James Bond, but he can also devise a sustainable village water
supply system. He has to know the engineering, because it is all part of his
cover. (By the way, that is “More” with one “o,” as in For All Seasons.) Regardless, it is easy to believe women would be
interested in him, but he is not a Bond-like player. That is why the intoxicating
and possibly tragic vacation romance that blossoms between him and Danielle
Flinders, an avowedly single workaholic marine bio-statistician, hits them both
so hard in Wim Wenders’ Submergence (trailer here), which releases
today on DVD and BluRay.
Before
leaving on a dangerous assignment, More takes a rare vacation in Normandy. We
can safely say it will be perilous, based on the in media res opening, focusing
on More starving in a Somali Jihadist prison cell. Flinders is also biding time
before leaving on an undersea expedition that is not without risks. When they
meet, the mutual attraction is immediate—and it progressively deepens over
their short holiday.
When
it is time to leave, they resolve to try to make a go of it long-distance, but,
presumably for her protection, More has yet to fully level with Flinders
regarding his true line of work. That is why she is so confused when he goes dark
after getting captured by the Islamists. She is so distracted by his presumed
ghosting, it even affects her work. He too is rather heartsick over her, but he
has more pressing concerns, like catching bugs to eat.
Submergence is considerably
better than critics made it out to be, but the speed at which Flinders’ separation
anxiety turns into self-pity is hard to buy into. Granted, she thinks he is in
Kenya rather than Somalia, but that is still not a super-stable country with an
ultra-modern communications infrastructure. She really ought to chill out and
stop calling every five minutes.
Still,
the first half romance is quite appealing, in a Brief Encounter kind of way. Alicia Vikander and James McAvoy are
attractive leads, but they also have a real facility for making screenwriter
Erin Dignam’s adapted dialogue sound natural—and erotically charged. Their
chemistry feels real.
More’s
captivity sequences also have a visceral charge. Some have focused on a bit of
dialogue in which More professes to admire the terrorists’ faith, but that is
taken somewhat out of context. Frankly, the film is pretty forthright in its
depiction the ruinous influence of Islamist extremism on Somalia. There is not
much for viewers or More to admire there. In fact, it gets rather bold when the
subject of a forced conversion video comes up.
Apparently,
J.M. Ledgard’s source novel makes much of how the two lovers’ lives supposedly
parallel each other’s after their separation, but Wenders wisely de-emphasizes
that synchronicity, aside from a few moments of dog whistle intuition, wherein Flinders
suddenly cocks her head in sudden alarm. In fact, the deep-sea exploration
branch of the film is definitely its weakest link. Nonetheless, Celyn Jones is
terrific as Thumbs, her less talented colleague, who is better suited to
winning over the ship’s crew.
