The Water People (1992)

Overview

An erotic and painful allegory of dark desire featuring blazing performances by its lead actors. Stew, a guitarist and intellectual, is traveling to the country with his girlfriend Carrie and their dog, Max, to Stew's recently-deceased grandmother's home to deal with her estate. Just as death is palpable in the house with its eerily silent rooms filled with boxes of decaying furniture and old photographs to be auctioned off, so too is the couple's relationship creeping toward an unspoken demise. Stew, who suffers from an unknown ailment and is in a perpetual state of denial, frantically clutches at his over-sexed girlfriend, who resents being tied down by any man. She sets her designs on an unwitting local gardener and uses him as a pawn in her game of sexual manipulation and destruction. Through voyeuristic imagery and a deafening silence, the tension builds to a climax.