This article is about the motion picture entitled Dark Harbor. For the resort area itself, see
Islesboro, Maine.
Dark Harbor is a 1998 film directed by Adam Coleman Howard starring Alan Rickman, Norman Reedus and Polly Walker.
Plot
David Weinberg (Alan Rickman), a lawyer in his 50s, and his much younger wife Alexis (Polly Walker), drive through a torrential rainstorm to get the last ferry to their private island. They catch sight of an injured young man (Norman Reedus) at the side of the road, whom they reluctantly drive to the nearest town.
Having missed their ferry, the couple checks into a motel, and take the next day's ferry. The young man (never named in the course of the film), is also on the ferry, though they do not meet.
David and Alexis have a troubled seven-year marriage, punctuated by miscommunication and missed opportunities. In an attempt to make up for his displays of temper, David arranges a romantic sailing excursion, but this goes terribly wrong when they encounter a fogbank and run aground. They find the young man camping on the shore, and are invited, after an initial misunderstanding, to share his fire. David recruits his assistance with ungrounding the sailboat, and invites him into his home.
That evening, Alexis dreams that she has taken a blanket to the young man and that her husband has attacked her in a fit of jealousy. In the morning, the couple discovers that he has made them a lovely breakfast, and it transpires that David has actually delivered the blanket to him.
David invites the young man to stay for dinner that night to sample his own cooking, then leaves to play golf. Alexis and the man toy with the growing attraction between them while downing a bottle of whiskey. He explains that he is a poet, but that he is unable to write and shows Alexis his work, all in different handwriting. He persuades her to take dictation of a quite dark poem describing drowning. Eventually they go off on a wild mushroom hunting walk in the nearby woods, and Alexis stops the young man from consuming a mushroom that she says would have killed him in a minute.
David returns from golf, claiming to be ill, but he recovers enough to make dinner for his wife and the man. The next morning, however, David provokes an argument with Alexis and gets into a brief fight with the young man. He leaves, hides in the shed, is driven out by David, and runs into the woods. Alexis tells David that they're through and then follows him into the woods. He seduces her and then gives her one of the poison mushrooms. The viewer is left to determine whether she has been forced to eat it or has eaten it voluntarily.
A funeral follows, and the young man's poem, written in Alexis' handwriting and signed by her, is read, as if it was her suicide note. David then returns to the island by boat. He strips and swims to shore in the icy water, as if stripping off and washing away his former life.
Some time later, the man arrives at the house. It becomes clear that he and David are lovers, and that Alexis' death was at some level, planned by the two of them.
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