Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy: Two Highly Respected Actors Have Real Sex in 'Intimacy'

In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, two highly respected actors achieve something closely resembling the title of the 2001 film Intimacy!

New Zealand native Kerry Fox began her career by fronting an epic look at one of New Zealand's most famous poets (Janet Frame) in the 1990Jane Campion film An Angel at My Table. Two years later, she broke out in a big way with a leading role in Gillian Armstrong's The Last Days of Chez Nous, and by the time she appeared in Danny Boyle's directorial debut Shallow Grave in 1994, she was one of the most in-demand actresses around. Mark Rylance, on the other hand, took a much different road to stardom, doing top notch stage work throughout the 80s and 90s that had earned him a reputation as one of Britain's best living actors.

By the time their paths crossed in 2001, Fox had nearly two dozen screen appearances while Rylance was only on his fifth film, his last one being released six years prior. They were a seemingly unlikely pair for directorPatrice Chéreau (Queen Margot), who was setting out to do a sexually explicit film version ofHanif Kureishi's novel "Intimacy," whichChéreau and co-writer Anne-Louise Trividic supplemented with material from Kureishi's short story "Nightfall."

Their film, as scripted, told the story of two people—an embittered, divorced man and a happily married woman—who meet once a week for torrid, anonymous sex that is completely lacking any of the titular promise.The man becomes obsessed with the woman, despite his enforcement of a rule in which they won't disclose any personal details about themselves, and begins following her after their dalliances, wanting to know more about this woman to whom he's growing more and more attached.

It's similar in many ways to Bernardo Bertolucci's erotic 1972 flick Last Tango in Paris—coming soon to this very column—except that loosened censorship laws in the three decades between the two films allowed Intimacy to be a little more equal opportunity in the nudity department. In addition to seeing all of Kerry Fox, the audience also sees all of Rylance, something that Brando never did on film. We don't have to wait long for their first encounter, coming just four minutes into the flick as the two wordlessly undress one another and have sex on the floor—their preferred place for coitus throughout the film...

In an absolutely fascinating article written by Fox's real-life partner Alexander Linklater prior to the film's release, he gives a lot of insight into the process of being "the other man" involved with a woman shooting explicit sex scenes with another actor. While adult film stars deal with this constantly, it's not the sort of problem someone married to a mainstream actor comes across. Sure, people shoot sex scenes in films all the time and are able to just go home to their partner with no lingering effects. But the script to Intimacy very explicitly stated that Fox's character Claire wouldbe performing oral sex on Rylance's Jay as the script contained the direction:“She sucks him off for a long time.”

Linklater relates this experience to another bout of jealousy he suffered as a young man, and while the whole thing makes for a truly engrossing read, I'll only be citing some sections. I would encourage you to read the entire article by clicking here. In addition to relating the details of the script, he gives some insight into the voyeuristic nature of his part in the endeavor...

"I did have another response, however, which crept in gradually and stayed with me for the duration of filming, right up until the moment I first saw Intimacy. It wasn’t the classic fantasy of being hidden while watching your partner have sex with someone else. But it wasn’t entirely unconnected to it, either. It was an impulse to know how far I could extend the boundaries of my possession of Kerry, and still feel the same about her. Or, rather, I knew I wouldn’t feel the same about her. Ahead lay an obscure destination of the heart. Would it be better, or worse? If it didn’t ruin us, would it make us stronger? Frankly, neither I nor (despite her experience) Kerry had any idea what it would be like, or what effect it would have on us."

After going through all of the standard steps of the grieving process, Linklater finally comes to acceptance, thanks to meeting and getting to know Rylance...

"Yet, as Kerry and I talked about it, a sense of adventure emerged. We developed a new solidarity. If jealousy is about watching-or imagining you are watching-an infidelity, then this would be an experiment in controlled jealousy. I met Mark Rylance and felt not the slightest twitch of resentment. Mark has a calm, almost elfin presence."

One other key point that Linklater points out is that while the oral sex was unsimulated, the rest of the sex was shot in the standard mainstream mold. Fox and Rylance wouldn't actually be having sex, but the camera angles and careful choreography would keep Intimacy from tipping over into the realm of the hardcore. However, one might be left to wonder why Chéreau was insistent on showing the blowjob? Linklater once again eloquently explains...

"So why, if it’s an illusion, the need to go as far as the film does? Why the need to show real oral sex, even if only briefly? And why the need to show, more often, Mark with an erection? The answer is simple. It is to take the internal logic of a work of art to a conclusion; that is its integrity. In this case, it is to take a story that deals with sex as far as the actors can allow, without compromising their personal lives, and to elicit from them the most powerful performances of which they are capable."

Circling back to the plot of the film, when Jay begins following Claire, he comes across a pub where she is performing in a bargain basement production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, and it is here that he meets Claire's cab-driver husband Andy (Timothy Spall) and their pre-teen son Luke. Jay blusters on and on to Andy about this woman he has anonymous sex with every week, remaining elusive but strongly inferring to Andy that he's the man banging his wife.

Whatimpulse is it thatdrives Jay to destroy another marriage, albeit one in which he's not a participant? Roger Ebert, in his review, thinks it might be the character's latent homosexuality, though he admits it's not quite overt enough to be a definitive theory. I think it's much more directly related to this relatively new phrase that's become quite a cultural dividing line: Toxic masculinity. Jay determines that if he can't be with Claire, then no one should be with Claire, and sets out to destroy her marriage, motivated only by his ownpain at her rejection.

Jay does fit the mold and his actions certainly bear out many of the hallmarks of toxic masculinity, though it hadn't been officially defined in the early aughts. Were this film made in this day and age, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that Jay turns to the life of an incel, forever embittered by rejection and finding it easier to retreat into self pity as opposed to, you know, moving on with his life. Again, this is a 2019 analysis of characters invented long before these tenets were established, but it's not hard to draw a relatively straight line between Jay and the so-called Men's Rights Activists who have popped up en masse over the last decade.

Thankfully the film—nor the source material for that matter—want Jay to be let off the hook, and he's so thoroughly pitiable at the end of the film that it's virtually impossible to sympathize with him or his actions. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that, like Tony Montana in Scarface, many people idolize this character despite their ultimate fate. It's sort of the catch-22 any filmmaker runs up against in making any character thoroughly despicable: Inevitably someone is going to empathize with that character and view him as the hero through their skewed lens.

Join us again next week when we check out Madalina Diana Ghenea representing all that the title Youth promises!

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