Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23933 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-06-03
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 115 minutes

Special Features
16:9 Wide Screen
English
Region 2

Synopsis
A man wakes in mid-afternoon in a grungy London flat. A woman knocks at the door. He lets her in, to an awkward silence. She touches his face tenderly--almost immediately they have stripped and are making love on a mattress on the floor. It is the first of many intense, real-time, sexually-explicit, encounters between Jay (Mark Rylance) and Claire (Kerry Fox). And director Patrice Chereau reinforces the intensity by keeping his widescreen camera very close to the actors.
Jay and Claire agree to separate their meetings from the rest of their lives. But after one encounter, Jay follows Claire. He discovers that she acts in a basement theater, and is married to a taxi driver, Andy (Timothy Spall). Following her again, Jay loses her. And, in a reversal of roles--like that in Christopher Nolan's FOLLOWING--when she re-emerges from a shop, she follows him. She is amused at first, but is disturbed when he goes to the basement theater.
Using Hanif Kureshi's stories as a basis, Chereau shifts the emphasis from Jay and his pain at separating from his wife. Instead, INTIMACY reveals a woman trying to start feeling again, who is caught between a needy lover and an anguished, insecure husband. Fox gives a fine performance (that won Best Actress at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival) that is the backbone of this powerful drama.

Customer Reviews

Refreshing
Much has been said already by other reviewers here, so I'll only add different points of view. I think this is an extra-ordinary cameo of a brief sexual affair between two stangers. If the sex scenes are controversial then I think it's because they are natural and realistic, contrasting with stylised sex in mainstream films. This is a beautiful, sensitive erotic story.

What makes it erotic is the compelling attraction between the two characters - this is done without words and is a strong point in the film, as Jay remarks on several occassions. Their encounters are the stuff of fantasies - anonymous sex. What is really refreshing from a woman's point of view is Jay's strength of feeling and tenderness in the role, performed brilliantly by Mark Rylance. To see a Jay cry in the last scene gives us another insight: a man needing more than sexual gratification - he wants relationship. By the end of the film we know he didn't leave his wife just because their sex life was over it was much more complex than that. As for Claire's role - well women aren't supposed to act like that are they? You know so detached emotionally? This is a brave film that turns gendered stereotypes and behaviour around. Another reason why it is so refreshing.

Oooh-er
The press for this film only concerns the sexual content and if that's why you want to see this film, you should go elsewhere. The sex here is as bleak as the film itself. The story, the cinematography and the attitudes are all quite depressing. But this film is not depressing to watch. Some scenes are enlightening and brought together by an amazing cast that are not afraid to push themselves, especially the amazingly multi faceted Timothy Spall. I watched this with my boyfriend and we decided that if our relationship began to falter we would sort it out to avoid anything reminiscent of this film. While being simple it is entralling and puts your own relationships into perspective. It is a bracing watch, but one that needs to be done.

A realistic insight to the male ego
When first approaching this film, I had mixed thoughts on the sort of message it hoped to produce. The graphic sex scenes could have lead me to believe that it was merely a test of controversy that its French director found titillating. Although I was not particularly impressed throughout, when I thought back on it, I realised the many levels that the film communicated on.

For a start, the film is not entirely about the crumbling of a marriage and the desperate search for passion in an otherwise lust less life. I discovered that so much of the film was dedicated to the dissection of the male ego. The constant Oedipal complexities that are present, help enhance the message about the power that the archetypal male craves. Our protagonist 'Jay' is a scared middle-aged man, weakened by the failure of his marriage and his in-ability to satisfy sexually. He struggles to hold on to false feelings of power in his work place (A good example of his inferiority occurs when his barman undermines him.)

His Wednesday activities with cheating wife and mother Jane, are deliberately shot to depict the unglamorous truth behind loveless sex. Jane's husband (brilliantly portrayed by Timothy Spall) serves as a good example of a man who has been stripped of his power and therefore lost meaning in his routine life of denial. The best scene in the film comes when Jay admits the adultery in code, whilst complaining about his bitter life, over a macho game of pool. Definitely a compelling film. Anyone studying Psychology or film studies would surely benefit.