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INTIMACY Send This Review to a Friend
At the outset of intimacy we see Jay (Mark Rylance) and Claire (Kerry Fox) making love with earthy intensity, shown to us explicitly. It is off-putting because of the ugliness with which it is filmed and the bodies thrashing around. Are we going to have to watch sex like that throughout the film? This is a weekly tryst the two have, the idea being anonymous, emotionless sex, pure and simple. The deed is the thing.
Gradually, as we learn more of the characters and the film shows us less of the sex scenes themselves, the French import set in London, which was shown at the New York Film Festival and previously won key prizes at the Berlin International Film Festival, becomes more absorbing and rewarding. Director Patrice Chereau, who wrote the screenplay with Anne-Louise Trividic based on stories by Hanif Kureishi, reveals that impersonal sex is impossible to sustain. It is not a new thesis, but the idea becomes clear here as Jay begins to follow Claire to learn more about her (she's a married actress). Claire is less curious about him.
The plot becomes stronger when Jay strikes up a friendship with Andy, played by the marvelous British actor Timothy Spall. Andy is Claire's husband, and the question is when he realizes that the woman Jay talks about regularly bedding is his wife. Something in the film has to give, and Chereau works up dramatic suspense. The lovers, now in the break-up stage, become more human and more attractive than at the beginning, and one begins to care about what happens. By this time one also has come to appreciate the quality of the performances of Rylance, Fox and Spall. An Empire Pictures release.
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