"In the end, The Weight of Water comes to resemble the kind of soft-core twaddle you'd expect to see on Showtime's 'Red Shoe Diaries.'" - Ed Gonzalez

Polley and Penn are good, obviously, and the central idea comes through and is genuinely interesting, but Bigelow makes some bad missteps in presenting aspects that you can tell probably worked better in the novel. The music is god-awful, but it's not as bad as Hurley's performance.

The movie has a lot of good talent involved, but the story was uninteresting to me and I did not care about any of the characters.

Kathryn Bigelow reaches a bit too high, with a jumble of artistic pretentions... there are moments where her Bergman and Antonioni influences show far too prominently. Sean Penn and Elizabeth Hurley trading off meaningful snippets of poetry is just embarassing. Another minor quibble: the movie hints too strongly at a major plot twist, ruining the big surprise. But it's different, or at least more different than most movies, and worth watching for Polley's performance if nothing else.