The Weight of Water (2000) review

Journalist Jean Janes (Catherine McCormack) is writing a piece about a double homicide that took place on the Isles of Shoals back in 1873 in which German immigrant Louis Wagner (Ciarán Hinds) was accused of murdering Karen Christenson (Katrin Cartlidge) and Anethe Christenson (Vinessa Shaw) - with a third individual, Maren Hontvedt (Sarah Polley), surviving the attack - and so she goes there with her husband Thomas (Sean Penn), Thomas' brother Rich (Josh Lucas) and Rich's girlfriend Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley) to do research.  Bigelow's strength as a filmmaker is adding a "feminine touch" to typically "masculine" movies - which can be seen in The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty decades after this and The Loveless and Point Break before it - except this adaptation of Anita Shreve's novel, which is split into two narratives, never comes together in a meaningful fashion.  If it was going to work, it needed someone with a more of a poetic sensibility: Hurley's vixen is just there to sunbathe topless and suck on ice cubes while Penn's poet is there to ogle her and recite lines, and the editing of the last act, which cuts rapidly from the past to the present, is sloppy.  Jean's "big deduction," that Maren had no boundaries to her sexuality and lashed out (and then lied) because of it, can be read as a (very early) anti-#MeToo statement, which I'm not sure would please modern viewers.