Every Wednesday afternoon in a dingy London basement flat, Jay (Mark Rylance) and Claire (Kerry Fox) have no-strings-attached sex. There is a rawness in their couplings — a desperation that seems to be a mix of suffering, desire, and voracious appetite. Their bodies convey all that needs to be expressed. Words are few and far between. When Claire is ready to go, she dresses and leaves.
Jay, a divorcee who has left middle-class domesticity behind, wants something more from Claire than arousal. So this barman breaks their sexual contract and follows her to a pub where he eventually meets her husband Andy (Timothy Spall), a taxi driver. Claire has a child and is playing Laura in The Glass Menagerie in the pub’s dinky theatre. For her the sex with Jay is all part of her erotic need to improvise, to express herself in as many ways as possible, to connect. When Claire discovers that Jay has spied upon her, she feels violated.
Intimacy is directed by Patrice Chereau based on works by Hanif Kureishi. This unusual film dares to explore both the pleasures and the limitations of sexuality. As Jay’s conversations with Andy and with Ian (Philippe Calvario), a gay barman, reveal, he wants to be in control in his relationships with women. Claire also teaches a drama class and tells her friend Betty (Marianne Faithful) about her erotic feelings.
Although both Jay and Claire are satisfied and gratified with their early sexual passion, in the end they do not find in it the kind of enlightenment or fulfillment they are looking for. Of the two of them, there is hope that Claire will use what she has experienced to further her erotic expression in other arenas.
