Intimacy (2001 film)

Intimacy is a 2001 erotic drama film directed by Patrice Chéreau from a screenplay he co-wrote with Anne-Louise Trividic, based on stories by Hanif Kureishi (who also wrote a novel of the same title). It stars Kerry Fox and Mark Rylance. The film is an international co-production between France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy,[2] featuring a soundtrack of pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s. Intimacy contains an unsimulated fellatio scene by Fox on Rylance.[3][4] A French-dubbed version features voice actors Jean-Hugues Anglade and Nathalie Richard.

Intimacy
French theatrical release poster
Directed byPatrice Chéreau
Screenplay by
  • Anne-Louise Trividic
  • Patrice Chéreau
Based onIntimacy
by Hanif Kureishi
Produced by
  • Patrick Cassavetti
  • Jacques Hinstin
Starring
CinematographyFrancois Gedigier
Edited byKaren Lindsay-Stewart
Music byÉric Neveux
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 20 January 2001 (2001-01-20) (Sundance)
  • 28 March 2001 (2001-03-28) (France)
  • 4 May 2001 (2001-05-04) (Italy)
  • 7 June 2001 (2001-06-07) (Germany)
  • 27 July 2001 (2001-07-27) (United Kingdom)
Running time
  • 107 minutes
  • 119 minutes (France)
Countries
  • France
  • United Kingdom
  • Germany
  • Italy
LanguageEnglish
Box office$2.7 million[1]

The film has been associated with the New French Extremity.[5]

Plot

Jay is a bartender who abandoned his family because his wife lost interest in him and their relationship. Now living alone in a decrepit house, he has casual weekly sex with an anonymous woman, whose name he does not know. At first, their relationship is purely physical, but he eventually falls in love with her.

Wanting to know more about her, Jay follows her across the streets of London to the grey suburbs where she lives. He then follows her to a pub theatre where she is working as an actress in the evenings. Jay learns that her name is Claire, and she has a husband and a son. Subsequently, it is made clear to Jay that Claire will not leave her family. They meet for a final time and have sex with an intimacy that has been missing during the sex sessions of their previous encounters.

Cast

Reception

Intimacy was placed at 91 on Slant Magazine's best films of the 2000s.[6]

In a 2001 lengthy column for The Guardian, Alexander Linklater described the jealousy he experienced when his partner Kerry Fox took the real-sex role in this movie. Linklater concludes that he accepted the unsimulated oral scene, but he insists that the sexual intercourse is an illusion.[7] Nevertheless, critics have declared its realist tendencies. Linda Williams, for instance, writes that "Intimacy opens with urgent, hurried and explicit penetrative sex"[8] and Tanya Krzywinska writes that in this first scene "the spectator is left in little doubt that penetration has occurred".[9]

Awards

Intimacy won the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox) at the Berlin Film Festival in 2001.

See also

References
  1. "Intimacy (2001)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  2. "Intimité (2002)". British Film Institute. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  3. "Dangerous liaisons". 22 June 2001.
  4. What Culture#8: Intimacy
  5. Quandt, James, "Flesh & Blood: Sex and violence in recent French cinema", ArtForum, February 2004 Access date: 10 July 2008.
  6. "Best of the Aughts: Film". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 10 February 2010.
  7. "Dangerous liaisons". www.theguardian.com. Retrieved 30 January 2022.
  8. "Linda Williams "Hard-Core Art Film: The Contemporary Realm of the Senses"". issuu.com. Retrieved 30 January 2022.
  9. Real Sex Films: The New Intimacy and Risk in Cinema, p. 97, p. 97, at Google Books
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