You know when you get one of your car tires stuck in the snow (or the mud, for those of you who don't live north of the Mason-Dixon Line) and the harder you work at freeing yourself, the deeper you sink?  That's the basic premise of The Deep End, a stellar new film from Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the duo who made the impressive, Hitchcockian Suture on a very tiny budget a few years ago.

Tilda Swinton (The Beach) plays Margaret Hall, and although she isn't literally spinning her tires, they're figuratively kicking up all kinds of debris.  Margaret lives in a beautiful home on Lake Tahoe with her husband, three children and father-in-law Jack (played by Peter Donat, Mulder's father from The X-Files).  Her husband, a military officer, is never around (we don't ever see him), leaving Margaret to contend with his distant father and the insanity of carting the kids around to all manner of extracurricular activities.

Margaret's trouble begins before the film even starts.  It seems that her oldest son, Beau (Jonathan Tucker, The Virgin Suicides), was recently involved in a fender-bender that involved both alcohol and a 30-something man she tracks down, in End's first scene, to a gay nightclub in Reno called The Deep End.  "I'm looking for Darby Reese," she says in a no-nonsense manner reminiscent of a slightly less confident version of Terence Stamp's Wilson from The Limey.

Darby (Josh Lucas, American Psycho) is offered $5,000 to stay away from Beau, and considers it because he's the kind of Reno lowlife who owes money to a bookie.  But he shows up at the Hall house later that night, confronting Beau in what leads to a shoving match.  Unbeknownst to Beau, Darby accidentally slips off the pier and catches the business end of an anchor in his chest.

Margaret finds the body washed up on the shore the next morning and, assuming her son did it, lets the protect-at-any-cost maternal instinct kick in as she disposes of Darby a la Harvey Keitel's Winston "The Cleaner" Wolf in Pulp Fiction.  Beau is a kid with a bright future (he has scholarship offers thanks to his trumpet skills) and Margaret doesn't want murder charges hanging over his teenage head.

But then the tire-spinning starts, and Margaret keeps getting deeper and deeper into what she thinks is a murder cover-up, eventually culminating in a blackmail attempt from a man named Alek Spera (Goran Visnjic, ER) He has proof of Beau's relationship with Darby and is prepared to take it to the cops unless he gets $50,000 within 24 hours.  And Alek doesn't so much care that Margaret has to deal with the dance recitals, car pools and the "Mom, where's my baseball glove?" stuff that goes along with being a mother.

The house on the lake is chock full of secrets, and that's one of the things that makes this story work so well (it's based on Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's 1947 novel called The Blank Wall, which was made into The Reckless Moment in 1949).  Margaret never questions her son about Darby's death, or his sexual history, and Beau keeps mum even though he's sure she's having an affair with that mysterious guy who keeps showing up and getting her flustered.  Even Jack seems to be hiding something from the rest of his family, although we never really find out what it is.

McGehee and Siegel, who produced, directed and adapted End's story from Holding's novel, use color here like they've been working with it for decades (Suture was in black and white).  Along with cinematographer Giles Nuttgens (Battlefield Earth), who won the top prize at Sundance for his work here, the directors use many cool shades of blue throughout the film, which helps to make it look like Margaret is living her life underwater.  We see water throughout the film (a dripping tap, fish tank, car wash, swimming pool, water cooler and, of course, the lake) but good old H₂O has practically soaked into Margaret's life, right down to her husband being in the Navy, and Beau being a member of the water polo team.

Even if you think End loses its way toward the denouement, there's no denying Swinton's wonderful performance.  It's one of the best you'll see this year, and she should clear her calendar for Oscar night.  Visnjic and Tucker do well in their smaller roles, but this is Swinton's show, and she takes full advantage of it in a way that you won't easily forget.

1:39 –

for some violence and language, and for a strong sex scene