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By John Demetry
At the end of this flashback, Jay's wife questions him about their sons: "You do love them, don't you?" In response, Rylance's face is the face of Jay then and Jay now - looking back in anguish. Jay has already abandoned his family when Intimacy begins. A pitiable, pompous pit of self-disgust, Jay probably blames his wife and kids for the abandonment of his dream of becoming a musician. Yet, now free, he chooses the bottle over a musical instrument. What's amazing is how much feeling Chereau evokes for his conventionally unsympathetic characters, such as Jay. Chereau, the famed opera and theatre director, wildly pitches each moment to an emotional extreme - complicated, conflicted feelings given operatic largesse. Chereau focuses that intensity on the dynamics within and just surrounding the sexual relationship of Jay and a married-with-child actress named Claire (Kerry Fox). Chereau's on-the-fly and on-the-edge narrative picks up in the midst of their affair. She comes to his home every Wednesday. They may make uncomfortable small talk ("You really live here?" "You asked me that last time."). Primarily, however, they make love - or try to make something - anything - out of sex.
The tres scandalous sex scenes, so explicit they include a shot of Fox
performing fellatio on Rylance's erection, have been both over- and
under-blown in the press. Distilling Chereau's art to its essence, the sex
scenes in "Intimacy" concentrate and expand Chereau's direction of
performance.
He inspires performers to sustained emotional arias balanced with high-wire interpersonal incisiveness. Inspired by them, Chereau captures the "holy moment" where actor meets character and where performers interact, here as a duet, to create an imaginative connection. That's how he clarifies the confounding push-and-pull of performance and sex. Throughout, Eric Gautier's handheld widescreen camera and Francois Gedigier's jump-cut editing, like the sex scenes, complicate notions of documentary realism. Chereau expresses the emotional desperation of the characters while also suggesting his own frenzied appreciation of the performers amidst a whirling choreography. The great leveler, sex, provides the catalyst in Intimacy for a true leveling of actor and character, film and audience. Claire plays the lead in Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagarie in a theatre-and-toilets space beneath the pub where her husband plays pool. Chereau and Fox eliminate Williams' female neurosis - which has become a banal art cliché that Claire tries on for size. Characters, performers, and filmmaker are after the same truth. Chereau is fascinated by Fox's willingness to bring Claire to life by stripping down physically and emotionally. In the sex scenes, Fox reveals Claire's vulnerabilities, never more than when she achieves euphoria jerking Jay off to orgasm. Chereau's perspectives on Fox's revelations invent a new female archetype, a cinematic Picasso of pain and possibilities. Rylance stylizes masculine despair; he's the same upside-down as right-side-up. His performance harmonizes with Chereau's sculptural treatment of the actor's physique. Chereau's swirling camera movements, marbled lighting, and wire-drawn control of editing, dissolves, and film speed reveal Rylance's gaunt countenance and body as a fluid plane of soul-torn ugliness and beauty.
Jay has two friends who try to be "there" - though he pushes them away, complicating ideas of intimacy. An old friend, the junky Victor (Alastair Galbrath), defines his friendship with Jay: "In thrall to our desires. That's us!" Galbrath's spitfire performance is that of an actor in thrall to his art - gauging the disparity to Victor's drug addiction. As Ian, a new employee where Jay is the head bartender, Philippe Calvario's earnestness and alert eyes make Ian's desire for Jay sweet and, ultimately, very moving. When Jay challenges Ian's advice about Claire by saying, "You don't even know her," Ian has a line that describes Calvario's unstudied approach: "But I can imagine her." It seems there is nothing Chereau cannot imagine. He establishes these characters' desperate attempts at connection within an existential worldview powered by the roaring sound and fury of the soundtrack. The scope of Intimacy extends in piquant details. After three of the characters share glances in a suspended design that is pure Chereau, his final shot piques the imagination: where will they go now and where will Chereau take his audience next? It expands the challenge stated by Jay's wife: "You do love them, don't you?" Chereau's vision of film and of life conceives vital expressions of love and intimacy. It's in the space between Jay's request of Claire to "Stay. Now. Stay, now" and her reply. Chereau locates the torment preceding artistic revelation. He unifies body and soul in the moment that Jay ejaculates into a wad of toilet paper while his son interrupts having wet his pajamas. Chereau loves everyone. |
Mark Rylance in Patrice Chereau's Intimacy
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