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Film Archive

Intimacy

Tribute to Patrice Chéreau 2009 / Intimacy / France, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain 2001

The film which won the Berlinale in 2001 examines the true essence of the concept of intimacy in a story of two strangers, a man and a woman, who meet up regularly for anonymous sex. Their "relationship” functions without a hitch until one of them breaks the rules and starts taking an interest in the other. Chéreau’s first film in English.

Intimacy Intimacy

Synopsis

Every Wednesday a woman rings on the bell of a shabby London house. A man opens the door and, without a word, gesture or emotion, they go down into a basement filled with useful and superfluous junk to a room containing a mattress with sheets on it. The sex between them is fiercely passionate, yet strangely cold. They don’t even know each other’s names. Is this intimacy? For Jay (Mark Rylance), this is the only thing he is willing to do. Some time previously he left his wife and two children without explanation and now works as a barman, cool, taciturn, almost incapable of normal communication. What does he expect to gain from his "Wednesdays”? He only finds out when, one day, he breaks the unspoken rules and starts following his lover (Kerry Fox) to observe her in her "civilian” existence as an amateur actress named Claire and the mother of a little boy. This knowledge affects him to the extent that he tries to destroy her "idyll”. Why? This study of two unhappy, emotionally frustrated and unfulfilled people, based on the semi-autobiographical short stories by Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette, The Mother), is the first film Patrice Chéreau made in English, in which he reflects on the true meaning of intimacy, readily incorporating explicit sex scenes in the first part of the story. However, he consistently rids them of any trace of romanticism or tenderness and merely uses the images for a raw study of emotional self-delusion. Intimacy won the Berlin IFF in 2001 and Kerry Fox also took away the Silver Bear for Best Actress.

About the film

119 min / Color, 35 mm

Director Patrice Chéreau / Screenplay Anne-Louise Trividic, Patrice Chéreau podle povídek / based on stories by Hanif Kureishi / Dir. of Photography Eric Gautier / Music Eric Neveux / Editor François Gédigier, Hélène Viard / Producer Patrick Cassavetti, Jacques Hinstin, Charles Gassot / Production Téléma, StudioCanal, Arte France Cinéma / Cast Mark Rylance, Kerry Fox, Susannah Harker, Alastair Galbraith, Timothy Spall, Marianne Faithfull / Contact SPI International Czech Republic, Studiocanal / Distributor SPI International Czech Republic

Contacts

SPI International Czech Republic
Branicka 1950/209, 140 00, Praha 4
Czech Republic
Phone: +420 261 216 318
Fax: +420 261 221 375
E-mail: [email protected]

Studiocanal
50 rue Camille Desmoulins, 928 63, Issy les Moulineaux Cedex 9
France
Phone: +33 892 393 910
E-mail: [email protected]

Guests

Ondřej Kulhánek
Distributor, Producer

Patrice Chéreau
Film Director

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