
The Deep Sky: The Abyss of Female Relationships Forged by the Collapse of Intellectual Consensus and Sensory Isolation
The gravity known as love sometimes holds us in comfort, but at other times, the attempt to break free from its orbit forces us to confront a vast abyss. We often wander incessantly between the intellectual arrogance of believing we cannot fully possess another and the primal desire for them to belong solely to us.
The work I will critique today is The Deep Sky, a film that feels like the cold dawn sky encountered at the end of that wandering.
[The Deep Sky] Film Information
| Category | Content |
| Title | The Deep Sky |
| Director | Frazer Bradshaw |
| Starring | Sarah Rose Butler (as Lenora), Luise Helm (as Nina) |
| Year/Country | 2017 / 🇺🇸 USA |
The Deep Sky Interpretation: The Atypicality of Emotion Breaking Down the Walls of Intellectual Consensus 💭
The non-monogamous relationship established by Lenora and Arlan is akin to a meticulously designed glass garden. They believe they can weed out jealousy using the tool of reason, prioritizing transparency and freedom as their highest values.
However, their intellectual arrogance fractures when it encounters a strange and captivating variable named Nina. The core of The Deep Sky interpretation lies in observing how helplessly this “designed freedom” crumbles in the face of raw, vivid emotion.
⭐ The declaration, “We don’t own each other,” paradoxically sounds like a sorrowful incantation, proving just how much they were actually feeling a deficiency in each other’s presence.
Lenora and Nina’s Relational Orientation: A Projection of the Repressed Self Encountered Beyond the Mirror ✨
The homoerotic bond formed between Lenora and Nina within the film goes beyond mere deviation. For Lenora, Nina is like a mirror that awakens her sensory self—a self that remained unfulfilled or un-verbalized in her relationship with her male partner, Arlan.
Amidst her attraction to Nina, Lenora experiences the peeling away of the mask of the “rational subject” she had so stubbornly maintained. The Lenora-Nina relationship is a painful process of introspection for a woman who was settled within the heteronormative order, as she discovers the complex layers of her own desire.
💔 The air between the two women is thick with tension, and the communion they share threatens their existing stable world while simultaneously awakening a sense of being alive in Lenora.
The Deep Sky Ending: A Solidarity of Solitude Left Under an Unpossessable Sky 🔭
The Deep Sky ending offers the audience a dense lingering space rather than a clear-cut answer. The three characters strive to connect in their own ways, but ultimately, they only confirm the existential limit: that a human being cannot fully reach the abyss of another.
Nina is invited into the couple’s experimental relationship, but she is ultimately left in the midst of solitude, belonging fully to no one. This metaphorically illustrates the alienation and the difficulty of securing agency that modern women face within relationships.
✨ Love loses its vitality the moment it is defined, and we can only briefly face each other under the sky of uncertainty. The film captures both the sadness and the beauty of those fleeting encounters.
Violet’s Insight: Layers of Survival and Relationships for Modern Women
Although this film deals with the provocative subject of non-monogamous relationships, it fundamentally depicts the struggle between “self-determination” and “emotional honesty.” Was Lenora’s attempt to redefine relationships outside of social conventions a failure?
I see it rather as the courage to face her desires as a woman and to accept even the uncontrollable sorrow that arises from relationships with others. Solitude is not something to be avoided, but a necessary gateway we must pass through to truly connect with another.
Can you wholeheartedly bless the freedom of someone you love? Or are you prepared to face the solitude left at the end of a relational experiment?
Violet Screen’s Curation: Female Narratives Breaking Relational Boundaries
- Film [Carol]: A masterpiece capturing the intense gaze and exquisite emotional mise-en-scène of two women who find each other amidst an oppressive historical era.
- Drama [I Love Dick]: A provocative portrayal of art, desire, and a woman’s journey to redefine her identity through an obsession with a specific subject.


