Patrice Chereau's much-hyped film Intimacy, which will have its second screening today at 8:50pm at the Golden Horse festival, is a long, miserable crawl through two people's cold sexual relationship.
Predictably, the attention the film has attracted wherever it has screened has focused on the in-your-face sex scenes involving the two lead characters Jay (Mark Rylance) and Claire (Kerry Fox), who meet every Wednesday at the same time for silent, anonymous sex. But the power of the sex scenes is not in their explicitness, which they certainly are, but rather in their brutal depiction of desperation.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF GOLDEN HORSE FILM FESTIVAL
Jay and Claire grasp at each other's clothes, fumble with clasps and zippers, and clutch each other almost violently as they go for it on a cold basement floor. There is nothing romantic or beautiful in their sex. The pleasure is visibly short-lived, and in the aftermath, the lovers awkwardly gather up their clothes and exchange glances that betray combinations of guilt, shame, relief and longing.
When it's all over, Claire slips out into the perpetually gray skies of London, leaving Jay, a divorced father of two, confused and broken. We quickly understand that the short time Jay has spent separated from his family has involved a steep slide into severe depression and hopelessness. Making this point all the more obvious are the occasional appearances of his ex-wife, looking healthy and well and with their two bubbly sons. The only part of Jay's life that suggests he once had his act together is his job as head barman at an upscale downtown bar.
The Wednesday meetings, which at first were purely carnal, begin to take on greater significance for Jay, who is desperate for human contact. He sets about discovering Claire's identity and from here on, the movie follows Jay on his increasingly precipitous drop into self-destruction and misguided attempts at redemption.
Compounding the somber script, based on stories by Hanif Kureishi, is Chereau's blue-toned, washed-out camera work that casts everything in an unforgiving and dull stupor. London is wet, ugly and morbid, like the actors who alternate between moping and frenzied anger. Claire, who, as Jays finds out is a wife and aspiring actress, has heavy bags under her eyes, while Jay sports two-day beard growth at all times.
Intimacy becomes more complex and gains its emotional power when Jay follows Claire to the pub where she acts in a small theater company's production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. There he meets Claire's husband Andy (Timothy Spall), a jovial cab driver, and her son. In gradual acts of confession, Jay begins to hint to Andy that his wife is cheating on him and that he is her lover. The scenes are painful to watch. We feel sorry for Andy and for their son and disgusted at Jay for his brashness. In a final surprise, we learn that Claire has beaten Jay to the punch and told her husband of their trysts, with the result that the misery in which the two lovers had wallowed now includes Andy.
Intimacy is bold in its honest treatment of sex and the fallout that can result when two people develop different agendas in a relationship. The affair seems in part a necessary outlet for Claire from her unhappy marriage, but it also is apparent that it's an extension of her hopeful acting career. Jay, on the other hand, seems to have stumbled into the affair and decided later that it was important. His friend Ian (Philippe Calvario), who serves as his voice of reason, is confounded by Jay's inability to accept the no-strings-attached relationship with Claire and tries to talk sense to him. "She asks nothing from you. Isn't that enough?" For Jay, who doesn't really know what he wants, nothing is far from enough.
Chereau exposes the bare souls of his characters in all their hideous humanity, which makes for unpleasant viewing. Intimacy will no doubt attract crowds eager to be shocked by the more pornographic scenes, which are actually few and quite short, but the movie is anything but titillating. It is harsh and nasty and in its emotional strength it is also brilliant.
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