DEEP END: a seedy bath time sex story

Back in the day, long before she became best known for decorating cakes, Jane Asher was quite a little raver. Or at least she portrayed one in DEEP END, and was damn good at it!

She plays Susan, a bored young woman working as an attendant at a run down public baths in a run down suburb of London. Back in 1970 people still visited these establishments to take a bath, as well as a swim in the pool, and it's her job to provide the customers with a clean towel, shampoo and soap, and clean out the bath afterwards. It's mind numbing work but there's the occasional perk in the form of a tip from a customer who wants more than their back scrubbed.
She takes impressionable new employee Michael (John Moulder Brown) under her wing, showing him the ropes and setting him up with some of the more sex starved middle aged female customers (including a let-it-all-hang-out cameo from Diana Dors) who are willing to tip generously for some young male company. Michael's only 15 and very awkward around women and Susan plays up to that, unwittingly encouraging the teenager to become besotted with her with tragic results.
For a story about sexual awakening DEEP END is resolutely unsexy. The baths are depressingly drab and dingy; paint is peeling off the walls, the private bathing cubicles feel dirty, and my mind was swamped with thoughts of foot infections like verrucas. When the action does move outside it's to the sex shops and cheap hookers of Soho, and a seedy cinema showing a Swedish sex film. Michael and Susan appear trapped in this hellishly demoralising world, surrounded by lecherous and uncaring older adults.
24 year old Asher is superb as the undeserving and callous object of young Michael's infatuation, and Brown is utterly convincing as the naive and emotionally immature boy who loses his head over her.Director Jerzy Skolimowski also deserves high praise for telling a compelling story in such an unappealing setting. Perhaps it takes the unsentimental eye of a foreigner (he's Polish) to create such a disturbing image of London's slimy underbelly.
DEEP END is a unique viewing experience. Its combination of drama, comedy, romance and craziness doesn't fit comfortably into any of the other genres of British movie (swinging London, East End gangsters, Carry On, literary classics) that were popular in the late 60s and early 70s. It's also a very hard to find film so if you get the chance to see it - grab it. You won't be disappointed.