DEEP END

Fifteen-year old Mike has left school to star work in a public bath in East London. Susan, who is in her mid-twenties, trains Mike. His first female client asks him to help her undress and pushes his head into her bosom, talking amorously about George Best. Mike feels violated, and refuses the tip Susan offers. She explains the flirtatious role-play is normal practice at the baths and encourages him to serve some of her female clients, who will tip well.

Mike, infatuated with Susan, fights with boys making vulgar comments about her and falls into the pool. Susan spies on him changing into dry clothes. Mike discovers that Susan is cheating on her fiancé Chris with Mike's former gym teacher, a married man who brings his female swimming class to the pool. Mike follows Chris and Susan into a soft-core adult movie theatre. Mike sits directly behind the couple. After Susan rejects Chris' physical advances, Mike strokes his face along Susan's arm, then fondles her breast. Susan slaps him and when Chris goes to report the incident to the theatre manager, she kisses Mike deeply.

Mike tries to impress Susan by going to the Soho nightclub Chris takes her to, but he can't afford the cover charge and waits outside eating hotdogs. Down the street, Mike sees an advertising photo cutout of a stripper resembling Susan. He confronts Susan about it on the London Underground. When Susan refuses to answer if she is the woman, Mike angrily leaves her on the Tube. After hours he takes the cutout to the baths and embraces it while swimming naked, imagining he's holding the actual Susan. Mike has been rejecting opportunities for sex, from his ex-girlfriend to a prostitute with a broken leg near the Soho nightclub.

The next morning, Mike jumps into a foot race directed by the gym teacher. He plants glass that punctures the tyres of his car when Susan goes to drive it. She assaults Mike, knocking the diamond out of her engagement ring into the snow. Mike and Susan collect the surrounding snow in plastic bags and take it back to the closed baths to melt it and find the diamond. The gym teacher comes for his keys and Susan runs him off, accusing him of ruining her life by grooming her. Mike finds the diamond and lies down naked with it on his tongue. He won’t give it to her, implying he wants something in return. Susan starts unzipping her clothes but Mike backs down and hands her the diamond. She goes to leave but reconsiders and lies down with him. They have a sexual encounter, which ends suddenly.

Chris telephones, and Susan gathers her clothes to go and meet him. Mike begs her to stay. Meanwhile, the pool stoker and opens the valve to fill the pool with water. Mike becomes more insistent, holding onto her clothes as she walks in the rapidly filling pool. When she goes to the ladder, Mike petulantly swings the ceiling lamp and hits her head. Dazed and bleeding, she falls under the water, as the lamp knocks cans of red paint into the pool. Mike embraces Susan underwater, just as he pantomimed with the cutout. Water continues to fill the pool, with the live, exposed wire dangling within.

After recovering the lost diamond, Mike and Susan are left alone at the closed baths, where a disturbing climax unfolds as Mike’s obsession reaches its breaking point.

The film's ending is a descent into the consequences of unchecked obsession, as Mike’s infatuation and the ambiguous signals from Susan finally combust in the empty, echoing baths. The finale isn’t just the endpoint of their dysfunctional dance—it’s a stark commentary on the cost of emotional exploitation and the hazardous fallout of blurring boundaries between adolescent longing and adult games. The empty pool, stripped of water and filled with unspoken tension, becomes their private arena for a final, unsettling confrontation.