Submergence is a 2018 romantic thriller about a man held captive by jihadist fighters and woman preparing to dive in a submersible to the ocean floor, a connection between them drawing them back to chance beginning.
On all levels, Wim Wenders‘ latest is a monumentally curious work, a film tightly wound about its often prosaic and confounding story. So much so, it drifts and meanders in long moments of question, mixing an assorted concoction of love and fate, looping us through a labyrinth of what it means to feel bound to another. To that effect, it leaves us in dead ends and corners, never really sure what to make of it, despite some moments that have endless potential to move us.
While in Europe, James More (James McAvoy), who works as a British agent tracking terrorists in Africa, meets Danielle Flinders (Alicia Vikander), a biomathematician who is nearing her first descent to the bottom of the ocean. They are instantly drawn to each other, a chemical and psychical attraction so powerful, it resets their motivations, though not long after, James – who has not told her what his real job is – is called away to Somalia to root out an extremist that seems on the verge of a devastating attack. Once there however, he is caught and thrown in a cell, tortured and brutalized for more than a month. As Danielle struggles with his absence, unsure why he won’t contact her, she spirals into confusion about her commitments to an undersea adventure she has long held as a dream.
Submergence is a film of pasts, both James and Danielle spending most of the film in reflection, reliving their brief but life-changing time together. For James, as he sits in isolation, trying to convince his captors that he is merely a water engineer, these breaks from reality allow him to endure while Danielle ponders in question, wondering why he won’t return her texts messages. These flashbacks are fodder for Wenders, whose been making films since the 1960s, to sort of unleash on the audience a tangled array of stylized and often poetic imagery of the two frolicking about in growing romance. Granted, these scenes certainly feel like genre paperbacks come to life, with Vikander and McAvoy doing their best to sell the steam. It’s just that we hardly ever care.
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Wenders, working off a script from the J.M. Ledgard novel, seems to find more interest in James as well, devoting much more of the run-time to his battle in the dark than with Danielle’s pining on a boat, admittedly a good choice, though it leaves the story a little unbalanced. How many times can we watch her (and him for that matter) look off into the distance in longing? It doesn’t help that the already nearly two-hour film is padded out with subplots that add nearly no momentum.
The parallels between these characters and the metaphorical links that seem destined to bind them are never quiet as impactful as they should be, the movie more inclined to cozy up to the melodrama than have anything of real challenge. I like both these actors and applaud their and Wenders effort to try and build something with Submergence that might steer a bit to the left of convention, yet this is all too empty in the commentary and the romance to be anything of significance.