Approaching the melodrama with the same deconstructive impulse Bigelow usually applies to action genres, The Weight of Water interweaves two parallel stories from a century apart—a present day story of sexual tension, jealousy and bitterness envenoming two couples and a period tale of a double murder driven by the same emotions. Bigelow characteristically heightens ambivalences inherent in the genre at hand, mounting the psychosexual tension between affection and rivalry, identification and competition traditional to melodrama, only in this case among women rather than men. One of Bigelow’s most intricate and ambitious films, The Weight of Water adds a more metaphysical dimension to the vein of dark fatalism that runs throughout her work.