Intimacy (2001 film)

2001 film by Patrice Chéreau

Intimacy

French theatrical release poster

Directed by| Patrice Chéreau
Screenplay by|

* Anne-Louise Trividic
* Patrice Chéreau

Based on| Intimacy
by Hanif Kureishi
Produced by|

* Patrick Cassavetti
* Jacques Hinstin

Starring|

* Kerry Fox
* Mark Rylance
* Timothy Spall
* Philippe Calvario
* Alastair Galbraith
* Marianne Faithfull

Cinematography| Eric Gautier
Edited by| François Gédigier
Music by| Éric Neveux [fr]

Production
companies

* Téléma
* StudioCanal
* Arte France Cinéma
* France 2 Cinéma
* WDR/Arte
* Mikado Film
* Azor Films

Distributed by|

* BAC Films (France)
* Pathé Distribution (United Kingdom)
* Prokino Filmverleih (Germany)
* Mikado Film (Italy)

Release dates

* 20 January 2001 (2001-1-20) (Sundance)
* 28 March 2001 (2001-3-28) (France)
* 4 May 2001 (2001-5-4) (Italy)
* 7 June 2001 (2001-6-7) (Germany)
* 27 July 2001 (2001-7-27) (United Kingdom)

Running time

* 107 minutes
* 119 minutes (France)

Countries|

* France
* United Kingdom
* Germany
* Italy

Language| English
Box office| $2.7 million[1]

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.

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

## Plot

[edit]

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 in London, he has intense weekly sex every Wednesday with a woman whose name he does not know. At first, their relationship is purely physical, but he develops an emotional attachment to her.

Jay is frustrated at work when his boss employs a junior barman, Ian, without consulting him, but later takes Ian under his wing.

Wanting to know more about the woman, 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, Andy, a black cab driver, and a son, Leo. Jay befriends Andy and Leo, but Claire remains unaware that they are in contact.

Jay's deadbeat friend Victor arrives unexpectedly to stay with Jay. Jay reluctantly allows him to stay but then throws him out on Wednesday before Claire is due to arrive. However, Claire does not come. Sometime later, Jay and Ian go to a squat to rescue Victor, as he has apparently fallen into drug abuse. Victor accuses Jay of being heartless. With Victor's encouragement, Jay has sex with a woman he meets there, but abruptly leaves in the morning.

Jay confides in Andy about his failed marriage and that he is having an affair with a mystery woman who he sees every Wednesday. Andy introduces Jay to Claire after a play, and makes a point of mentioning Jay's affair to her. Andy and Claire later argue. Andy claims he doesn't care about the affair but that she is a bad actress who will never get anywhere, and that her persisting with it infuriates him. She tells him she's not going to leave him.

Andy visits Jay's bar and obliquely makes it apparent that he knows about the affair. The next Wednesday, Claire arrives at Jay's house while Ian and Victor are helping him to clear it. She makes it clear to Jay that she will not leave her family, and won't see him anymore. They have sex one final time, then Claire leaves without looking back.

## Cast

[edit]

* Kerry Fox as Claire
* Mark Rylance as Jay
* Susannah Harker as Susan, Jay's wife
* Alastair Galbraith as Victor
* Philippe Calvario as Ian
* Timothy Spall as Andy, Claire's husband
* Marianne Faithfull as Betty
* Fraser Ayres as Dave
* Michael Fitzgerald as bar owner
* Robert Addie as bar owner
* Rebecca Palmer as Pam, girl in squat

## Reception

[edit]

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.[3] Nevertheless, critics have declared its realist tendencies. Linda Williams, for instance, writes that "Intimacy opens with urgent, hurried and explicit penetrative sex"[7] and Tanya Krzywinska writes that in this first scene "the spectator is left in little doubt that penetration has occurred".[8]

In a 2015 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mark Rylance spoke of his experience on the film. At the time of the film's release, talk of the film's unsimulated sex scenes in tabloids added stress on his marriage. Rylance commented, "It soured me on my life two months. It’s my mistake, but I felt Patrice [Chéreau] put undue pressure on me on set to do that. And at that point I didn’t have the confidence as a film actor to say no. Now I think a lot of actors that people say are difficult are actually just being sensible.”[9]

## Awards

[edit]

Intimacy won the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox) at the Berlin Film Festival in 2001.[10]

## See also

[edit]

* Unsimulated sex

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Intimacy (2001)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
2. ^ "Intimité (2002)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 9 March 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
3. ^ a b "Dangerous liaisons". TheGuardian.com. 22 June 2001.
4. ^ "Intimacy". whatculture.com. 14 February 2016. Archived from the original on 6 December 2021.
5. ^ Quandt, James (February 2004). "Flesh & blood: sex and violence in recent French cinema". Artforum. Archived from the original on 10 August 2004. Retrieved 10 July 2008.
6. ^ "Best of the Aughts: Film". Slant Magazine. 7 February 2010. Retrieved 10 February 2010.
7. ^ Williams, Linda (22 April 2008). "Hard-Core Art Film: The Contemporary Realm of the Senses". issuu.com. Retrieved 30 January 2022.
8. ^ Tulloch, John; Middleweek, Belinda (2017). Real Sex Films: The New Intimacy and Risk in Cinema. Oxford University Press. p. 97\. ISBN 978-0190244613.
9. ^ Goldman, Andrew (5 March 2015). "Damian Lewis and Mark Rylance Star in PBS Masterpiece's 'Wolf Hall'". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
10. ^ "Prizes & Honours 2001". www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 11 October 2022.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Frey, Mattias. (2016) Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today’s Art Film Culture. London: Rutgers University Press.
* Krzywinska, Tanya. (2006) Sex and the Cinema. London: Wallflower.
* Palmer, Tim. (2011) Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
* Williams, Linda. (2007) ‘Hard-Core Art Film: The Contemporary Realm of the Senses’, Quaderns portàtils, (13), pp. 1–20.

## External links

[edit]

* Intimacy at IMDb
* Intimacy at Rotten Tomatoes

* v
* t
* e

Films directed by Patrice Chéreau

* La Chair de l'orchidée (1975)
* Judith Therpauve (1978)
* L'Homme blessé (1983)
* Hôtel de France (1986)
* Contre l'oubli (1991)
* Queen Margot (1994)
* Dans la solitude des champs de coton (1996, TV version).
* Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (1998)
* Intimacy (2001)
* Son frère (2003)
* Gabrielle (2005)
* Persécution (2009)

* v
* t
* e

Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear

1951–1975|

* Cinderella (1951)
* Four in a Jeep (1951)
* In Beaver Valley (1951)
* Justice Is Done (1951)
* Without Leaving an Address (1951)
* One Summer of Happiness (1952)
* The Wages of Fear (1953)
* Hobson's Choice (1954)
* Die Ratten (1955)
* Invitation to the Dance (1956)
* 12 Angry Men (1957)
* Wild Strawberries (1958)
* Les Cousins (1959)
* El Lazarillo de Tormes (1960)
* La Notte (1961)
* A Kind of Loving (1962)
* Bushido, Samurai Saga (1963)
* To Bed or Not to Bed (1963)
* Dry Summer (1964)
* Alphaville (1965)
* Cul-de-sac (1966)
* The Departure (1967)
* Who Saw Him Die? (1968)
* Early Works (1969)
* The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971)
* The Canterbury Tales (1972)
* Distant Thunder (1973)
* The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)
* Adoption (1975)

1976–2000|

* Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)
* The Ascent (1977)
* Ascensor (1978)
* Las truchas (1978)
* What Max Said (1978)
* David (1979)
* Heartland (1980)
* Palermo or Wolfsburg (1980)
* Deprisa, Deprisa (1981)
* Veronika Voss (1982)
* Ascendancy (1983)
* La colmena (1983)
* Love Streams (1984)
* Wetherby (1985)
* The Woman and the Stranger (1985)
* Stammheim (1986)
* The Theme (1987)
* Red Sorghum (1988)
* Rain Man (1989)
* Larks on a String (1990)
* Music Box (1990)
* The House of Smiles (1991)
* Grand Canyon (1992)
* The Wedding Banquet (1993)
* Woman Sesame Oil Maker (1993)
* In the Name of the Father (1994)
* The Bait (1995)
* Sense and Sensibility (1996)
* The People vs. Larry Flynt (1997)
* Central Station (1998)
* The Thin Red Line (1999)
* Magnolia (2000)

2001–present|

* Intimacy (2001)
* Bloody Sunday (2002)
* Spirited Away (2002)
* In This World (2003)
* Head-On (2004)
* U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (2005)
* Grbavica (2006)
* Tuya's Marriage (2007)
* Elite Squad (2008)
* The Milk of Sorrow (2009)
* Honey (2010)
* A Separation (2011)
* Caesar Must Die (2012)
* Child's Pose (2013)
* Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014)
* Taxi (2015)
* Fire at Sea (2016)
* On Body and Soul (2017)
* Touch Me Not (2018)
* Synonyms (2019)
* There Is No Evil (2020)
* Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)
* Alcarràs (2022)
* On the Adamant (2023)
* Dahomey (2024)
* Dreams (Sex Love) (2025)

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