“This is the only thing that is real,” says Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) to Hal (Christopher Abbott) in Zachary Wigon’s psychosexual thriller and melodrama, Sanctuary. There is a world outside our two protagonists: one a dominatrix and the other her wealthy client, but inside the meticulously appointed hotel room the real world is supposed to be forgotten and only gameplay is indulged. The real-world bleeds into Hal and Rebecca’s sanctuary when Hal decides he is going to end his transactional relationship with Rebecca, even offering her a $32,000 Audemars Pigue watch as a kind of retirement gift. The audience has already been given a peek into their roleplaying via their interaction with Rebecca playing a representative of a law firm questioning Hal about his suitability to be heir presumptive to his father’s multimillion dollar hotel chain. It’s all business until it’s not and Rebecca has Hal scrubbing a toilet in ritual (and scripted) humiliation.
It’s all business until it’s not is the core of Sanctuary, a film that flirts with the ideas of power and dominance and constantly upends the notion of who is going to come out on top in the game of life. Will it be the privileged Hal Porterfield about to become the CEO of his deceased father’s company, or will it be Rebecca, the Denver dominatrix who has built Hal’s confidence up via multiple sessions?
Hal’s first mistake is to fire Rebecca using words he took directly from his father’s memoir, “I need to match up my insides with my outsides and be a person who wins” he tells her. Hal’s second mistake is thinking that Rebecca is going to go quietly and be discarded. Hal’s third mistake is underestimating how much Rebecca understands about the corporate world and forgetting that she, indeed, knows more about him than any other person.
Hal and Rebecca have unwittingly developed a symbiotic relationship that seems built on fantasy but is grounded in who they are and want to be. “It takes two,” Rebecca says after Hal applauds her after their scripted session. Hal thinks Rebecca is disposable and tells her that she quite literally is if he chooses to make it so, but Rebecca is essential to him as breathing. Wanting to please her is why he exists. Over time he has transferred wanting to please his father (who now dead will never give him the approbation he desires) into his play with Rebecca. Over one frantic night the two will realise that some people are born to be someone, and others are not.
Through Ludovica Isidori’s lumionous and often disorienting cinematography and Ariel Max’s score that whirls like pure Sirk in places, the audience is witness to two people who will drive each other to the edge of reason and push every envelope. Rebecca blackmails Hal by telling him she has hidden a camera recording all their sessions in the hotel room. Hal goes wild smashing the place to find the camera while Rebecca gleefully dances. What she wants is a share of his income, relative to her importance to making him the man he is. What he wants is to be done with the “crazy bitch” that could ruin his life if the board and his mother ever find out that he’s a “pervert.” Positions shift constantly – the one holding the knife (metaphorically or literally) is in charge. But games are never that simple. Which version of Rebecca is real? When she tells Hal that she has stopped seeing other clients and broken up with her fiancé because she felt it was disloyal to Hal, he spirals more violently than when the possibility that Rebecca would release footage of their sessions.
Micha Bloomberg’s script gives Qualley and Abbott plenty to work with in developing their respective characters. Qualley as an actor has used her sensuality before in power games, most notably in Claire Denis’ Stars at Noon, but Sanctuary is a new level for her. Similarly, Abbott has used wounded masculinity and being at odds with the world in roles in On the Count of Three and James White. Together in this work they fizz with intensity and an undeniable chemistry.
Sanctuary takes a fascinating approach to the dynamics of power through a whirlwind dance through actual and figurative role playing. Neither Wigon nor Bloomberg are interested condemning either the sex worker nor her client in Sanctuary but rather seeing how the mechanics of shame come from feelings of inadequacy from trying to be something you are not, and don’t have to be. Sanctuary is provocative and romantic cinema suggests being honest about your desires, no matter how strange they may be, can lead you to a clear sense of self – your best self. Just as long as no one gets hurt.
Director: Zachary Wigon
Cast: Christopher Abbott, Margaret Qualley, Francisco Castaneda
Writer: Micha Bloomberg
