Sometimes the camera goes everywhere you don't want it to go, such as, ugh, behind the bedroom door. There, what it discovers isn't pretty: Bodies, unless toned, buffed, sunned and well lit, are pretty hideous – bloated, stretchy, raw things, with knobs and blemishes. Ugh.
But behind the bedroom door is exactly where Patrice Chereau's vividly raw "Intimacy" takes us, for better or for worse, as it tracks a locked-room affair between strangers who meet for the substance of the title on a weekly basis. We get to see what goes on, and it isn't pretty.
Though Chereau's technique is to rub our noses in the raw, the crude, the rude, the vividly authentic, the conceit of the film is basically romantic: It's somewhat akin to the famous "Last Tango in Paris," with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, or even "Same Time, Next Year," with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn.
The apartment is Jay's, and it's scabby and messy, as any single middle-aged man's would be. Jay, played brilliantly by Mark Rylance, manages a pub, is estranged from his wife, loves his two sons, and can't figure a damned thing out.
He doesn't even know why Claire shows up every Wednesday – with a camera crew, no less! No, that's a joke, though the camera crew is there, and we see what the lovers see, but we don't enjoy what they enjoy. It's quite graphic, which has made the film already notorious rather than famous, but it won't put you in a mood for Sinatra and cheap champagne so much as a couple of aspirin and an early, solitary bedtime.
The rules are that neither will ask the other questions. But Jay, who pretends to be debased by the situation, nevertheless gives in to curiosity and follows Claire (Kerry Fox). He discovers that she's a housewife and an amateur (but talented) actress, stuck in a loveless marriage but loyal to the concepts of family and motherhood (she has a son). He can't stay away and soon has befriended her cab-driving husband, Andy (Timothy Spall). Is he stalking her?
Well, he's really stalking himself. Does he love her? Does he need her? What does he want and need?
"Intimacy" has no easy answers to those questions; it's dour and unpleasant. But in the way a vaunted "truthful" movie like "In the Bedroom" never achieves, it does get at the messy totalitarianism of uninvited emotions, and in that sense, it's haunting.
INTIMACY (NR, 119 minutes) – contains sexually graphic scenes and profanity. At Visions Cinema.
