'Sanctuary' overview: Intercourse and sophistication are the battlefields on this BDSM two-hander

Who’s on prime, and what shall be left of them? That sensual variation to the tagline for the unique Texas Chain Noticed Bloodbath film is a cosy match for director Zachary Wigon’s incisive battles-of-the-sexes thriller, Sanctuary. 

Christopher Abbott stars because the sub to Margaret Qualley‘s dominatrix, who smacks some sense into (and a few cents out of) him over the course of a number of hours in a lodge room. Touching is verboten, however scarring one’s psyche is truthful sport.

Abbott performs Hal, the prince-like son of a just lately deceased hotelier and business titan. The household is of the Hilton kind: impossibly rich, privileged, and scandalous. However together with his father’s demise, the household franchise (and the billions that include it) is about to develop into Hal’s and Hal’s alone. The truth is, later this present day his mom is about to throw a celebratory dinner in his honor the place the passing of the torch will develop into official. And so Hal not solely now owns the lodge room the place he and his favourite dominatrix play, he owns the lodge and the complete lodge chain. It’d as effectively be the complete world. All the higher privacy-wise — numerous nooks to do soiled enterprise in. 

However earlier than he is topped king of the lodge chain, Hal has some to take care of some soiled enterprise of the non-public kind. Some papers to signal, nudge nudge wink wink. Rebecca (Qualley), all buttoned-up and blonde, arrives with a briefcase and a few stern phrases about what a nasty, dangerous enterprise boy Hal’s been. And earlier than it, she’s working a finger alongside the mantle for shameful mud and Hal’s on all fours, panting in his underpants beside the bathroom bowl. One edged-out orgasm later, seems it is all been a script of self-plotted humiliation that Hal wrote for himself and Rebecca, who teases the position out to an ideal ten.

Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott play one another — and us.

Not that it is a huge ah-ha, revelatory second — Sanctuary is aware of this opening phase is a fetishized ruse. Qualley’s shoddy wig ought to give the sport immediately, however the film nonetheless has some enjoyable with it. That trap-door feeling, personalities nested inside different personalities, units the stage for the rollercoaster of one-upmanship for the remainder of the journey. Hal says this shall be their final assembly, that he’s acquired to go be a correct grownup man now, and we see one thing in Rebecca shift. Is it anger? Respectable heartbreak? What begins out as a goodbye will get drawn out to its furthest reaches.

Or does it? Simply how a lot is “the sport,” as they name it? It would all develop into purposefully opaque as Rebecca’s motives and moods swing about, and Rebecca’s needling extra fearsome and sweaty by the scene. Proper across the time she begins teasing that Hal’s been the unsuspecting star of his personal hidden-camera present, the dams doth spill over – if that is a part of “the sport,” then its borders are bursting.

So the power-play dynamics of the wealthy and masochistic aren’t only for the Succession set! Everyone’s doing it nowadays; it’s a extra in style pastime than ever since we had that spoiled rich-baby household soiling up the White Home for 4 rotten years. Repeatedly, we use our leisure to kind sense in useless from the rich and people who undoubtedly don’t deserve mentioned wealth, advert nauseam. And little question because the billionaires hoard increasingly more, we’re solely going to get increasingly more vicarious takedowns — extra Triangle of Disappointmentes, extra The Menus. Sanctuary appears like these sprawling concepts vacuum-sealed down right into a smaller, extra suffocating and claustrophobic container: My Dinner With Dominatrix. 

As the 2 transfer concerning the suite, their interaction shifting with the wind, we’re left to suss out who’s the highest and who’s the underside in any given second. And as such, who’s actually controlling the world? And the buildings that preserve us in test are revealed for the act of religion, the emperor’s garments, that they’re. Strip down the empty fits to the unhappy boys beneath.

Preserving issues contained, Sanctuary proves extra may be much less.

Actors (and people who love to observe actors work) love this type of whittled-down chamber piece: two folks, one room, and countless variations on a theme bounced backwards and forwards between them. Certainly, that is the second of this actual type of man-versus-woman showdown that Christopher Abbott himself has starred in from simply the previous 5 years. If you have not seen it go watch 2018’s Piercing, which noticed him and Mia Wasikowska play-acting out this identical type of dynamic, solely with a lot more violence; plus, it felt barely extra trustworthy in that Abbott’s illustration of contemporary heterosexual manhood was additionally a serial killer. 

Abbott is actual good at this type of factor, with these bed room cow-eyes of his, black as tar. Unknowable. Punchable. And Qualley, her present star rising just like the solar seen from six inches away, proves a formidable accomplice. She’s by no means resembled her mom, Andie MacDowell, greater than she does right here, and the specter of intercourse lies and videotape looms massive in Sanctuary‘s backdrop. You possibly can really feel Sanctuary aiming for that actual sultry but sinister moment-defining dialogue – the “that is what heterosexuality appears like proper now!” of it. And Qualley provides attraction and issues each probability she will get. Nothing right here is easy, nothing right here is straightforward, nothing right here is pain- or ecstasy-free.

There’s chemistry for days between these two. Their tête-à-tête thrums with fireplace. They bounce off the partitions, by no means precisely the identical individual with the identical motivations from scene to scene. And also you’re by no means positive who they’re placing the large present on for: the opposite one, us, or their very own sorry selves. Up, down, shaken, stirred – they’re going to have you ever feeling sexy and humiliated for feeling it by hairpin turns.     

The liminal house of lodge rooms has been the playground for extra storytelling than I might depend on ten thousand fingers. As they’re hotbeds of anonymity, we may be who we wanna be underneath these stiff sheets, washing no matter sticky liquids off with that single-serving bar of cleaning soap. Sanctuary teases that concept out in its very title — a respite and an oasis with mints on the pillow — after which undercuts it cleverly at each flip.  So, should you’re down to observe two high quality actors mess around in that playground for 96 cooped-up and penetrating minutes, I will not choose you for it. Not except you’re into that type of factor, anyway. 

Sanctuary opens in theaters, starting Could 19.