Film Review: Intimacy (2001)

Among the 21st-century films remembered for the wrong reasons, a very special place should belong to Intimacy, a 2001 Franco-British drama directed by Patrice Chereau. The film that won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival would have been soon devoured by oblivion, like so many pretentious pieces of European arthouse cinema, if not for certain details of its content that would plague two main members of its cast in later years.

The plot is based on the stories of British writer Hanif Kureishi and set in London. The protagonist, played by Mark Rylance, is Jay, a former musician who lives in a dilapidated apartment after his wife and children left him. He is making ends meet as a bartender in a posh pub, while the escape from monotonous life is provided by a mysterious woman, played by Kerry Fox, with whom he meets every Wednesday and has brief, but passionate sex.

Jay is initially happy with the casual nature of the relationship, but gradually begins thinking that it should be something more than simply satisfying his carnal desires. He begins to discreetly investigate his partner and discovers that her name is Claire, that she has a family and spends some of her free time as an amateur actress. In order to discover as much as possible about Claire’s life, he even befriends her husband, a kind-hearted taxi driver named Andy, played by Timothy Spall, unaware that such action could have devastating consequences for his relationship with Claire.

Intimacy created much attention because it followed a trend in late 1990s and early 2000s art cinema, with many filmmakers trying to distinguish themselves with “edgy” content. And the easiest way to achieve such “edginess” was to have cast members perform actual, unsimulated sex on screen. Since CGI and prosthetics weren’t available, in the case of Intimacy, this meant that Sir Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox actually had to perform the sex acts front of cameras, similar to what Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky did in the White House.

Both Rylance and Fox were well-established and respected actors – Rylance was the director of the Shakespeare Globe Theatre in London, while Fox was one of the most prominent New Zealand actresses of the 1990s, starring in Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave and numerous arthouse films. Despite winning the Silver Bear for Best Actress in Berlin, Fox many years later expressed regret over her role; Rylance, who would later have a prominent role in Dunkirk, did the same, claiming that it had a negative effect on his marriage.

The porn industry, on the other hand, didn’t have to worry much about new competition from “mainstream” cinema. It could be argued that the sacrifices of Rylance and Fox were in vain, because the scene in question, like other unsimulated sex scenes that take up a large portion of the film, are quite un-erotic and not attractive at all. Actually, there is hardly anything attractive in Intimacy at all. This includes the two main characters, which are unlikely to cause much empathy from the viewers – Jay is someone who gave up on his family for utterly selfish reasons, while Claire is a pretentious art snob.

All their friends are even worse, being portrayed as alcoholics, drug addicts, or mentally unstable persons. The only one who can get a little grain of sympathy is Andy, played by the always dependable Timothy Spall, but he appears too late to improve the general impression of the film. While films that make that case aren’t uncommon, they usually do it with more style and skill than this pretentious film that forces the audience to sit for two hours in theatres to briefly see content that is easily available on the Internet.

RATING: 2/10 (-)

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