Diaz is largely performing in a vacuum: Keitel, unbelievable for starters as a middle-aged judge, seems unsure at which pitch to play the largely physical comedy, and Sheffer, as the best friend, is fairly vanilla.

Diaz, clad mostly in a one-piece yellow swimsuit, is left floundering in the shallows of a script which relies on ludicrous human behaviour and mechanical plot twists, the latter signposted by an over-emphatic score.

One moment, ''Head Above Water'' plays like a clanking melodrama, the next like a gallows comedy of corrupt yuppie manners.

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