Sometimes, films are not meant to be lifted from their spiritual home and placed somewhere else. What would Blade Runner be like if it were placed in the present and set in Edinburgh? What would The Third Man be like if it were set in London and not Vienna (besides being historically inaccurate?). So, I feel about Intimacy, that -although based on stories by an Englishman-it strives so hard for 60's Existentialist angst that one almost expects Mark Rylance's haggard barman Jay to spend his time reading Camus whilst washing his collection of black polo necks.
This film is known primarily for it's sex, but that is unfair. The sex is definitely uncompromising, but Kerry Fox definitely sucks it to her critics with a rather daring and uncompromising performance, which reminds me ever so slightly of Kim Novak in Vertigo, complete with eyes that always seem to hold something of herself back. Indeed, Intimacy should really be called Obsession, or Vertigo in South London, as it is a film about projection, and of the lengths that we go to in order to project a certain image of ourselves or someone else onto a life-canvas. In that sense, it works. But in another sense it patently does not. What party worth it's salt would invite two wheezing late-middle aged soaks like Rylance and his friend Victor there, bopping to The Chemical Brothers like unwelcome relatives at a wedding? Why would a woman like Fox end up with an opinionated cretin like that played (albeit brilliantly) by Timothy Spall? The film is too wordy, too long, yet strangely enough, the characters still remain under-developed. The sex-though graphic (Mr. Rylance definitely appears to be in a heightened state of pleasure in more than one scene)-is sensitively presented and does not leave one feeling titillated. All in all, a noble, intelligent failure
This film is known primarily for it's sex, but that is unfair. The sex is definitely uncompromising, but Kerry Fox definitely sucks it to her critics with a rather daring and uncompromising performance, which reminds me ever so slightly of Kim Novak in Vertigo, complete with eyes that always seem to hold something of herself back. Indeed, Intimacy should really be called Obsession, or Vertigo in South London, as it is a film about projection, and of the lengths that we go to in order to project a certain image of ourselves or someone else onto a life-canvas. In that sense, it works. But in another sense it patently does not. What party worth it's salt would invite two wheezing late-middle aged soaks like Rylance and his friend Victor there, bopping to The Chemical Brothers like unwelcome relatives at a wedding? Why would a woman like Fox end up with an opinionated cretin like that played (albeit brilliantly) by Timothy Spall? The film is too wordy, too long, yet strangely enough, the characters still remain under-developed. The sex-though graphic (Mr. Rylance definitely appears to be in a heightened state of pleasure in more than one scene)-is sensitively presented and does not leave one feeling titillated. All in all, a noble, intelligent failure
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