‘Sanctuary’ Review: Margaret Cowell and Christopher Abbott Are Electrifying in a Flexible Duo

Zachary Vigon, a 2014 director including but not seen heart machineHere’s another story of confused impulses and competing desires. sanctuary, a two-way set almost entirely in a hotel suite. Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott make an exceptionally good team here, in a film that demands deep sexual chemistry but leaves sex almost entirely out of the picture. Moving from one type of intensity to another, encounters are exciting without tension and, like the transactions you describe, in any case have more to do with psychology than sex.

Abbott plays Hal, the heir to a massive hotel fortune who spent part of his spoiled youth in an unlikely relationship. She regularly meets Domintrix (Rebecca from Qualley) at her family’s hotel, who writes scripts that coerce and humiliate her but never sleeps with her. Preparing to take over the troupe now that his father is dead, Hal knows it’s time (as Shakespeare’s Prince Hal once did) to give up his potentially scandalous pleasures. As he awaits Rebecca’s final visit, he prepares a parting gift and expects a friendly goodbye.

Every year it becomes more difficult to study fiction about the rich who, in order to satisfy all their physical and practical needs, must invent new forms of misery and achieve the pleasures of others. (heritage And other successes suggest this isn’t a problem for everyone.) But the conflict we’ll see is hard to imagine without large sums of money, and it costs more than Richie Rich’s movie. take it.

Rebecca arrives posing as a stranger sent for a business interview, and the two share their usual story. When they’re done, they sit at the room service table, during which Hal announces (as if they both know the day is near) that it’s time to call it a day. “I have to compare my insides with my outsides,” he explains, referring to the need to be seen by the business community as “a person who wins.”

But after receiving the news and saying goodbye, Rebecca passes through the elevators. This business kiss isn’t right. He returns to Hal’s room and insists that without his services, he would never have gained the trust to run this company. As a member of the proletariat of rare influence, he declares: “I want what I am worth in comparison with you.” An expensive retirement watch is not going to happen.

The tension is obviously building. Movies set in hotel rooms seem to demand a change, and this one offers a lot as the two fight, threaten and tease each other. Although his arrangement has always included him as if he was at her mercy, whenever he feels cornered in today’s conversation, he is quick to acknowledge his wealth, suggesting that it gives him the unique power to decide how things turn out. But he’s too smart and cunning to accept that. At various points, he finds ways, some honest and some not, to demonstrate his power and scare Hal.

Every now and then the film stops for breath, punctuated by interludes of abstract color. Earlier, renting this reminder Drunk in love feel misunderstood. But as the image progresses, revealing a deep and tangled relationship between the two, a distant relationship with this film seems less impossible. Perhaps we are witnessing a love story that is simply tainted by money? Is there any way to get through all this that doesn’t end up with a man ruined by scandal and/or a woman’s corpse buried in the foundation of a new hotel?

Both actors ride this roller coaster with emotional intelligence beyond their years, but the script guarantees that Qualley owns the show. This is a sex worker whose imagination is not limited by her work; Watching him manipulate Hal, sometimes out of his own desperation and sometimes seemingly out of mutual pleasure, is a lot of fun. (Virtually none of this has anything to do with excitement, though Rebecca has an incredible “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” moment while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, otherworldly erotica.) And while smart money is on. Her script, by Micah Bloomberg, makes it impossible to predict with certainty how things will unfold.

Without going into details, this battle of wits and will is one moment bitter, the next darkly hilarious, sometimes with threats of mere physical violence. Buried (sometimes far away) beneath that is a tenderness between two people sharing unusually intimate moments and, for Hal at least, revealing secrets in an environment they’ve agreed to keep safe. (“Sanctuary” is his safe word, which seems never to have been used.)

If the film were less charming on the surface, you could spend a lot of time finding metaphors for more conventional forms of employment, where bosses can throw themselves at ease, regardless of how much they trust a coworker. . in the past. But sanctuary It’s a lot of fun to turn it into a socialist lesson plan. In the end, in fact, it’s a kind of exciting, if momentary, escape from such things.