Customer Reviews

Intimacy (Unrated, Widescreen Edition)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This amazing movie is a look at the ways that a man, the protagonist Jay (Mark Rylance) once-married, and a once fairly conventional husband and dad, can utterly fall apart in divorce, the heartbreaking ways he might try to put a life back together, and the ache for connection and communion that can't necessarily be soothed - within or without "happy" marriages.

By now the plot and the fact of its depiction of acts of sexual intercourse are well-known. There is a woman, Claire. She shows up at Jay's door, Wednesdays at 2 PM. We don't know anything about her at first - just that once she's in his apartment, her clothes (and his) come off. The five to ten minutes of intense once-weekly sex on Jay's apartment floor is no less important for being quick and wordless; it is a sort of a pact between the couple, and their shared illness, really. But it can't, ultimately, do the trick, and the film succeeds - unmoralistically - in showing us how and why. The urge to find either oblivion or ecstasy - whether via alcohol or sex or other means - fuels the couple. There are amazing surprises along the way, via a script that is utterly believable and natural.

In fact, every aspect of the protagonist Jay's life is in fact shown harshly, "graphically," whether it is his hectic job tending bar, his messy, depressing apartment (further evidence that he has lost his moorings), his several friends, or his frantic travels through London. (The camera chases him, and he is chasing her). We're by turns frustrated, confused, and focused. One's attention never wanders during this story.

Children (Jay's and Claire's) are used well in this film. They can tell the truth, and they do. They use the word "love" - and the adults in this movie really can't. In several scenes Jay is at his ex-wife's apartment, bathing his beautiful little sons. He lies on what was the marriage bed and makes a sort of sad and frantic fetish of his ex-wife's underwear, and is interrupted by his son, who needs his help. We are never asked to be voyeurs, but witnesses to a lot of sadness, distress - and the difficulty, really, of the attainment of happiness.

This is an astonishing film about broken hearts - and what people might do to try to mend them.

Intimacy isn't about titillation or tanned toned Hollywood studs and babes having perfectly choreographed sex in beautiful lighting while poor piano music plays. Instead it's about an ordinary pair of people seeking solace in a purely physical relationship. Both are empty individuals and briefly find something to fire them in their weekly sexual meetings. Nothing is said but there is a purity of understanding.

The relationship, and the film, only falters when the film moves outside the seedy flat that the liaisons take place in. The wordless arrangement can only work while everything is strictly anonymous, and once Jay (Rylance) delves into Claire's (Fox) personal life their apparently simple relationship becomes more complicated.

It's also here that the film briefly slumps. Jay encounters Claire's taxi driver husband, played by an uncharacteristically off form Timothy Spall. Speaking nonsense and totally over the top, his scenes are almost unbearably dreary. I can certainly see why Claire would want peace and quiet and intense sex after listening to that intensely boring man twitter on. Still, it doesn't make his scenes any better to watch.

Despite that though the film regains it footing and ends strongly. Even Timothy Spall's character shows some hidden depths! However, Intimacy works best as a comment on the relationships people trap themselves in. It's easier to stay in an unhappy relationship than walk out, and starting something new takes courage. Jay and Claire are unable to escape their empty lives, except in their sexual relationship. Really both are cowards. Neither is happy, but neither makes a serious effort to change their circumstances. Sex is a temporary answer to a permanent problem, and until they reach out for something more neither will be happy.
The film had an increasing energy which I liked, and I'm sure you would like it too, if you let yourself inside the film.

Helmed by French auteur Patrice Chéreau, who directed the vastly superior "Queen Margot," the Birtish film "Intimacy" is a limp mess. A man and woman carry on an illicit affair - they meet at his house Wednesday afternoons for sex. They know nothing about each other, not even names. Eventually, the man (Jay, played by Mark Rylance) finds himself wanting to know more about the woman (Claire, played by Kerry Fox), and he begins following her after their trysts. What he finds out about her throws their relationship into question.

"Intimacy" gained attention and notoriety for its explicit sex scenes (the R-rated version is also available, and these scenes are edited a great deal). The sex scenes are among the most graphic ever seen in a mainstream movie, including a rather shocking scene where Fox fellates Rylance (everything is shown). Ultimately, however, the sex scenes are quite un-sexy as the characters are so distant from each other. A movie called "Intimacy" that lacks any intimacy whatsoever? Sounds like an elaborate joke to me.

Aside from the explicitness of the sex scenes, the movie offers nothing new. The characters are not well-delineated, and the conflicts are ill-defined. On the plus side, Mark Rylance ("Angels & Insects") and Kerry Fox ("Shallow Grave") give good performances; however, it's rather disconcerting seeing such talented actors engaging in graphic sex scenes in a tepid movie. Both actors have impressive backgrounds in the theater, and Rylance has acted extensively in Shakespearian productions at the Globe Theatre. Shaking his spear indeed!

Extras: The DVD includes minimal extras: a photo gallery, brief bios of the actors, and the trailer. A director commentary would be much appreciated, or even a commentary from the actors. I'd love to hear what filming the explicit sex scenes was like!

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. The sex scenes were some of the best I've seen because they were graphic yet very realistic. The story was touching and honest. If you're an adult who enjoys a realistic story that is very hot, you will definitely enjoy this gem. Watch and enjoy!

When I went to see that movie, I was a bit afraid of the sex scenes talked about in all media after this film had been awarded two Golden Bears, the highest awards of Berlin film festival (I prefer to watch films that got awards)...
What I then saw were two white bodies, moving together like Rodin's sculptures beautifully united in their dance of desire...There was no artificial smiles or styled muscles, natural true sex with sweating and sounds of exercise, and the relief afterwards, tenderness, not many words were exchanged ...
It was a film tremendously moving for the truth it showed, starting with the sex on the floor, pictures of the protagonist Jay smoking on the toilet in a bathroom filled with fungi (men usually do not clean up, that is so real)..
Reality without cosmetic everywhere: the brown, grey blocks of London suburbs, Jay's friend Victor, a sweating alcoholic wearing a moist but elegant jacket, wonderfully realistically played, too, Claire, in contrast to her type wearing once elegant black much too expensive underwear, which highlighted the image of her being a bad actress..(she played that role wonderfully, showing how good she really is..)..
Mark Rylance was superb in showing so much vulnerability, having had to leave the family, the boys he very much loved, the wife he still waited to show him something more than just detest(there is a rather naturalistic masturbation scene, after his wife had turned away from him in bed sleeping like their dead relationship..)...So much following, a great playing Marianne Faithful, Timothy Spall wonderful, all these naturalistic characters at the Pub or at the actors school...
I can watch that film on and on and still discover new things all the time....Wished that everybody could get so much from it!

"Intimacy", a film about two middle-aged people, Jay and Claire, who meet for sex every wednesday, is difficult to digest as a whole. It's as if the film needs to be divided into two distinct sections: the scripted melodrama and the graphic sex scenes.

Let's start with the scripted scenes. In terms of the script and story, "Intimacy" is pretty mediocre. The main characters, although confused, neurotic, trapped and lonely, are still really not all that interesting or believable, and the supporting characters are mostly irritating and often incoherent. It is interesting that the most believable, touching and tender scenes in the film don't involve the two main characters at all, but rather involve interactions between adults and children. One scene in particular is especially poignant; when Jay is at the theatre, confronting and chastising Claire, when suddenly her son appears and he's instantly transformed into a sincere and vulnerable father again.

As for the sex scenes ... with so many films filled with contrived, choreographed, robotic sexuality, it was interesting to see sex depicted so realistically in a film. At times visceral, awkward, vulnerable and sad, the brief sex scenes probably show more of the dynamics behind Jay and Claire's relationship than most of the rambling, pretentious dialogue in the rest of the film.

A worthy movie for adults. The plot is a bit like "Last Tango in Paris," with a man and woman accidentally meeting, then showing up one afternoon a week for some rabid sex, neither telling the other anything about themselves. The guy (Mark Rylance) decides to follow the woman (Kerry Fox), discovers she's married and works in a shabby theater, and is married to a not-overly-bright man who has too many chins and a puffy lower lip like Alfred Hitchcock's. Both of the men want her and she decides to stay with her husband and children. End of plot.

This is about as deglamorized a movie as has recently appeared. At first, both Rylance and Fox look like the kind of people who are right up there in the first rank of the third rate. He runs a bar. He's balding, skinny, always needs a shave, and lives alone in some seedy dump that looks like a Soviet-era zheloy dom. She first appears with her hair up, working-class style, glumly groomed. And the two of them are photographed -- dressed or otherwise -- in a way that makes their skin seem to emit a pale sickly blue. Your first thought is liable to be a red flag: This is going to be one depressing flick.

Then as the plot develops -- hard as it is to follow in its details -- we come to know them surprisingly well, the two of them. Rylance takes on a certain pathetic charm with his scarred eyebrow and occasional stutter. And Kerry Fox lets her hair down, literally, and we can see the self-knowledge and the desire in her big blue New Zealand eyes. They become likable.

In many ways the most admirable person important to the story is Timothy Spall as Kerry's husband, the Hitchcockian cab driver. He's not particularly bright and he trusts people a bit too much. And, man, he looks unprepossessing. But he's gregarious, generous, good-natured, and as harmless as a child. When he discovers that Rylance and Fox have been boffing each other, what does he do? Does he pick up a gun and spray lead. Does he do a plastic-surgery number on Rylance's face? Nope. He goes round to Rylance's bar, has a beer, and tells Rylance that he loves his wife. And that every day he loves her more. Later, when Fox prompts him to ventilate his anger over her affair, all he can come up with is something like, "I don't care about that s***! What really bothers me is that you're a lousy actress and will never be anything else!" When he's done shouting, she replies, "You don't even know how to hurt me." There are other characters in the story too -- children, an ex-wife, somebody named Victor with a Scots accent, and a gay French bartender who philosophizes a lot. (I wonder if the writers had a particular model in mind.) Next to Kerry's husband, the French guy is about the most articulate of the bunch.

But that's the problem with the movie. I was frankly lost at times. I honestly don't know how Spall's character found out about his wife's affair. Evidently she confirmed suspicions he already had, but since the scene doesn't appear on screen we have to guess. In fact, if the love scenes are speechless, the rest of the script isn't much better. More than once a character says to another, "I can't understand a word you're saying." Sometimes I couldn't either. "We shouldn't be gay because someone died." "Nobody died." "I died once. It was the only day I could tell the whole truth." I think we're in "Last Year at Marienbad" territory here. A shouting match between Rylance and Kerry in the basement theater made no sense to me at all. It reminded me of my marriage.

I recommend it though. It's a rare movie made for adults. It's a challenging drama about lives that are either half empty or half full, depending on how you look at them. The ending is sad, but we are at least left with the hope that these characters can mend their tattered lives and get on with things.

Patrice Chereau is a unique director - he understands film as well as opera staging and goes for the edgy despite what the critics disclaim. INTIMACY is a bizarre story that appears more like an extended dark dream than it does a study of people in their waking hours. Note that most of the story takes place in shadows, and for very good reason. Jay (Mark Rylance) is a divorced man who quite by mistake discovers Claire (Kerry Fox) when he happens into a raunchy little theater - Claire is playing in The Glass Menagerie and her real life seems nearly as crippled as her character's life. Claire is married to a cheery fat Andy (Timothy Spall) who waits on her hand and foot, encouraging her minimal theatrical talents, while he unwittingly introduces his new found friend to his wife. Jay and Claire quite without words begin a series of weekly trysts that are solely sexual releases. When Jay begins to feel his emotions awakening, the story takes a turn and we are left watching how two people can meet, congeal, and taint their peripheral others. The acting is first rate, including a fine gay character as portrayed by Phillipe Calvario, apparently drawing a parallel with the concept of one night stands encountered in the gay world with Jay and Claire's sex-for-sex-sake. Yes, the film is dark, but that side of life deserves examination and for this viewer, the camera work, direction, music, and pacing by Chereau are very apropos of the theme. Worth watching as a sort of London version of Bertolucci's DREAMERS!

First off, this is not a movie for: 1. People with puritannical hangups about sex and nudity, 2. People with infantile and cliched notions of Romance and Relationships with capital R's, 3. People with kitschy expectations of what a "pleasurable" movie experience should be like, and 4. People with generally childlike, conformist perceptions of self and society.

"Intimacy" is really about the LACK of real emotional intimacy, even in the midst of feverish physical intimacy between two randy strangers, not just in the all-too-familiar midst of the universal social theatre of conventional marriage with its elaborate playacting and mutually-agreed-upon delusions.

It is above all about the emotional and cultural reality that all too many of us live in: abject isolation, emotional deadness, self-absorption and ego-glorification, raving desperation and desolation.

The sex scenes are extremely realistic: instead of the usual cosmetized puppetry most often seen in film eroticism, we see two pale, flabby, clumsy and dysfunctional adults go at each other like mute rabbits, about 8 parts too-long-repressed libido and 2 parts actual skill.

Yes, there is quite a bit of (gasp!) exposure of an (gasp!) uncircumsized (gasp!) male (gasp!) sex organ, including actual (gasp!) mouth-to-genital contact (to borrow the oh-so poetic language of the Starr Report) in (gasp!) both directions.

There. Now if those stupendously mind-blowing, earth-shattering details do not knock you off of your rocking chair and leave you in a prolonged state of catatonia, you may well quite enjoy this film. True, the two main characters do not ever ride off into the sunset on a white horse with flower petals in their hair, but you probably guessed that one already.

Like other reviewers, I was disappointed in "Intimacy". I found that the film had very little to say in terms of why the two main characters (Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox) carried on such an unpleasant sexual relationship. Their weekly meetings in Rylance's grungy apartment for sex obviously indicated they each had deeper more emotional needs. But neither find what they are looking for. They are both frustrated, unhappy people with unfulfilling lives and blunt, crude sex grants them the temporary escape valve. However, it's obvious that the sex isn't really fulfilling either one of their needs. Rylance and Fox are good actors and Marianne Faithful is good as one of Fox's friends. But neither Fox nor Rylance is terribly attractive so their nude sex scenes aren't that interesting which makes the sadness and desperation of their acts even more downbeat. I agree the film is more explicit than most but without a good story and at least a positive note or two I can't really recommend it. If the film's intent is to show that an empty sexual relationship gets you nowhere, then it succeeds very well on that premise.