Submergence
James (James McAvoy) is a British agent under the cover of a water engineer, while Danny (Alicia Vikander) is a bio-mathematician working on a deep-sea diving project to explore the origin of life on our planet. On a chance encounter in a remote resort in Normandy where they both prepare for their respective missions, they fall rapidly, and unexpectedly, into each other's arms and a deliriously wild love affair develops, even though their jobs are destined to separate them. Danny sets off on a perilous quest to dive to the bottom of the ocean. James's assignment takes him to Somalia, where he is sucked into a geopolitical vortex that puts him in grave danger. Both characters are subject to different kinds of isolation as they pine for each other; their determination to reconnect becomes as much an existential journey as a love story.
1959, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
27 November 1979, Lyon, Rhône, Rhône-Alpes, France
21 December 1973, Evry, Essonne, France
22 July 1977, Ivry-sur-Seine, France
21 April 1979, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
1972
21 November 1965, Sudan
4 June 1979, Anglesey, Wales, UK
3 October 1988, Gothenburg, Västra Götalands län, Sweden
April 12, 2018
Much of "Submergence" remains frustratingly inert and vague, as though the helmer never wanted to commit to a single idea, instead offering several half-baked concepts with hopes something might stick.April 10, 2018
Submergence moves, as one of its creatures, in waters so turbulent it can't scale its excessive ambitions. [Full Review in Spanish]April 10, 2018
Submergence lives only pending its rigor, its strange and pompous efforts of abstraction. And, of course, it runs out. There is no air left. [Full Review in Spanish]April 12, 2018
Submergence is worthy of the engravings that could have illustrated a poetic anthology of Hölderlin. [Full Review in Spanish]April 11, 2018
You'll have nobody to blame but yourself - or the filmmakers - if you keep watching after the sixty-minute mark.April 12, 2018
Despite their strong performances, McAvoy and Vikander are unable to save this sinking ship of a film. Ultimately, we are sadly left with an average movie that leaves viewers feeling disappointed and unsatisfied.September 12, 2017
Even two glamorous and well-matched stars of the moment can't do much to undermine the Wenders meander.April 12, 2018
Ms. Dignam's script distills the novel into middlebrow Hollywood treacle.April 12, 2018
Submergence - despite much lovesick gravitas from its two leads - never quite coalesces into the epic romance that it should. It fizzles when it should ignite, leaving the viewer with a palpable yearning for something other than a shrug.April 11, 2018
An objectively bad movie, paradoxically ponderous and pointless.September 12, 2017
The most roundly satisfying fiction feature Wenders has made since, well, that first one about the angel so in love he gives up immortality.April 12, 2018
Despite the potent raw material at his disposal, Wenders listlessly flips back and forth between the two backdrops, allowing any remaining element of dramatic tension to slowly seep out along the way.