Intimacy

Having first written Daniel Day-Lewis’s breakthrough role in My Beautiful Launderette (1985), Hanif Kureishi returns to familiar thematic stomping ground with Intimacy; a co-scripted effort with Patrice Chéreau, who marks his advent into English language filmmaking, and his ninth directed feature.

Living in a filthy London flat after walking out on his wife and children, Jay (Mark Rylance) is convinced the only comfort he needs is physical. This task falls to Claire (Kerry Fox), who meets him for a weekly tryst with no-strings attached. As their weekly sessions continue, Jay becomes more and more curious about his mysterious lover and her life outside his squalid bedroom. Deciding to follow her one-day, Jay stumbles into her life… and husband. Desperate to discover as much as possible, Jay befriends him, and soon realises he is oblivious of his wife’s infidelity.

Again displaying a keen insight into the pessimistic and disturbing view of human sexuality, Chéreau (La Reine Margot, Gabrielle) seamlessly switches perspectives between the claustrophobic sex scenes in Jay’s apartment to Claire’s typical middle-class life, garnishing the narrative with a vérité texture.

Chéreau’s film will undoubtedly bring to mind other contemporary erotic features such as 9 Songs or Shortbus, but also pays homage to Marlon Brando’s swaggering anti-hero in Last Tango in Paris. Often grouped with the New French Extreme cinema (such as Breillat’s Romance or Noe’s Irreversible), Intimacy nonetheless bears the uniquely identifiable stamp of its maker, expunging the detailed and striking dynamics of human relationships, for which the boundlessly talented theatre, opera and film director Chéreau is revered the world over.