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 ntimacy" is the kind of film that you never see
being made in America. This could be for a number of reasons, from the average
American's belief that anything with vast amounts of nudity should be rated XXX
(or that mind boggling NC-17) or be tossed into the frozen wasteland of
late-night cable television. It's a shame really because a film like
"Intimacy" is so gloriously beautiful, even when everything onscreen
is so grimy and dirty, that it deserves to be seen. "Intimacy" exposes
a part of all of our lives and it needn't be hindered by a foolish rating
system. (That, incidentally, is why I never bother to display the rating of a
movie on these review pages.)
Directed by a Frenchman and starring English actors Kerry
Fox ("The Point Men")
and Mark Rylance, "Intimacy" tells the tale of two strangers who
engage in a seemingly loveless affair, meeting every Wednesday afternoon and
then parting ways until the next Wednesday. There doesn't seem to be any love or
passion to the sex between Jay (Rylance) and Claire (Fox), and in fact the two
don't even know each other's names. Their only conversation before their frantic
couplings on the bare floor are of the inane kind, the kind that is not worth
starting in the first place. Things start to fall apart when Jay, on the spur of
the moment, decides to follow Claire home. He ends up at her workplace, where
besides learning that Claire is an aspiring actress, he meets her husband, a
taxi driver, and son…
A lot of people (myself included) have often accused the
French of using gratuitous nudity in the name of art (the film "Baise
Moi" comes to mind), but "Intimacy", which contains plenty of
graphic sex and displays every inch of the human body (male and female), makes
me re-think that belief. The sex and nudity in "Intimacy" is really
unimportant, just as it seems to be an insignificant matter for Jay and Claire.
To them the sex is just a byproduct of their relationship – if you can call it
that. It's a mutual symbiosis between Jay, a man who left his wife and two sons
one day, and Claire, an aging woman who finds a measure of passion for life with
the (seemingly) passionless Jay. Their affair is more about salvation than it is
about the sex, because it's very obvious neither one of them gets very much out
of it. As it stands, each sex scene between them gets even less and less
passionate, until it becomes almost a near-rape of Claire by Jay.
"Intimacy" does one very daring thing that I
could never imagine a Hollywood-produced film doing (or actors submitting to it,
for that matter). It's not too hard to imagine that director Chereau had
instructed his leading actors to come to the set with some pounds on them.
Rather this is really the case or not, the physical appearances of all involved
(including sex partners Jay and Claire) all conform to the real world. These
aren't supermodels posing as "real people," or vain actors who spends
hours in the gym each and every day with their personal trainers because they've
been told they'll be doing a lot of nude scenes. Fox and Rylance have fat on
their body, they are not in the best of shapes (mentally and physically), and
Chereau and cinematographer Eric Gautier show their faces in stark lighting,
revealing every fault and line. These people look, feel, and are real.
Much of the set for "Intimacy" is bathed in
shadows. From Jay's run-down, pigsty of a bachelor's pad (he moved out of his
house after he left his wife), to Jay's wrinkled appearance, the film's
aesthetics ring true. Jay's apartment, of course, also reflects his current
state of emotional confusion. Jay is lost, a man who had to give up his musical
career when his wife became pregnant, and whose only joy is to go to work at a
trendy bar where he serves as the undisputed king of the bar. Even those moments
are rare, since he eventually has to return home, and back to himself.
It is at work that Jay meets Ian (Philippe Calvario), a
young Frenchman who, it turns out, knows more about Jay than Jay does. The only
other friend in Jay's desolate life is Victor (Alastair Galbraith), a junkie
whose own life is a mess. The two share a bond because of their experiences, and
we get the feeling "Intimacy" could have starred Galbraith's Victor as
the main character and Rylance's Jay as the best friend and nothing would have
changed.
The rest of the cast, including Timothy Spall as Andy,
Claire's emotionally unavailable husband, all brings a lot of baggage to the
film. In fact, the whole film is one big reservoir for emotional baggage. All of
these people seem unable to veer away from the road to self-destruction no
matter how much they try – that is, if they try at all. Besides the young
characters that seem immune and oblivious to the degradation of their adult
counterparts, every character that exists in Chereau's "Intimacy"
seems destined for ruin. That is, ruin of their own making, and no else's.
"Intimacy" is a terrific film that exposes the
turmoil of the human soul and the timeless confusion and carnage that rages
within all of us, rather we know it or not. Director Patrice Chereau has crafted
a fine tale of alienation and need that is such an emotional tour de force that
one can't help but feel emotionally and physically drained when it's all over.
"Intimacy" is truly a powerful film that despite being covered in
ugliness, is very beautiful to behold.
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