Intimacy

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Vibrating with humanity, it's a potent portrait of love, ranging from the purely carnal to the impurely sublime.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

A new version of the greatest psychological mystery of all: love.

Chicago Reader Richard M. Porton

Chereau's film is both an observant portrait of class-bound London by a foreigner and an empathetic look at sexual passion that completely avoids cheap prurience.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A triumph for all concerned, it is especially so for the multitalented Chereau.

Slate David Edelstein

Intimacy doesn’t answer the question, which makes it all the more tantalizing: This is an emotional puzzle movie.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It isn't the sex that shocks here, it's the chilling core of loneliness. Intimacy dares to cut deep, and its daring gets to you.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

Although much has and will be made of the film's sexual explicitness -- and, yes, it is a bit -- this less-than-perfect but deeply felt film is finally most daring for its hard-core insistence on our need for connection.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A raw, wounding, powerfully acted film, and you cannot look away from it.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Jay and Claire are exquisitely played by Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Sometimes gets bogged down in its own wordiness.

Miami Herald Marta Barber

You may be drawn to Intimacy's graphic scenes, but you'll emerge convinced there's more to life -- and the film -- than sex.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A disconcerting experience.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

If Intimacy does anything well, it portrays desperation, in many different forms.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Powerfully acted, intensely carnal drama.

Variety David Rooney

A tortured reflection on the complex relationship between love, sex, desire and obsession, distinguished by courageously raw performances from leads Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Chereau's film is disjointed and abrupt and it rages when is should be deft. We're given too little too late and, despite the lessons that lie within the affair, the lines between enlightenment and nihilism blur.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Plays like a warmed-over "Last Tango in Paris," with more explicit sex but a lower level of originality and acting skill.

Film Threat Ron Wells

It's ironic that a film exploring the mysteries of how people succeed and fail to connect with each other then fails to really connect with its audience.

New Times (L.A.) David Ehrenstein

A lacerating study of sexual alienation.

The New Yorker David Denby

The movie holds one in its surly grip, but when it's over, few people, I think, are likely to be haunted by it. Futility may work as a mood in a short story, but in a full-scale movie it doesn't bear looking at for very long. (29 Oct 2001, p. 92)

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Some people will want to call it pornography. In one respect, it's the opposite.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Wants to be a "Last Tango in Paris" for the new millennium, but its flaccid dramatization and hollow moralizing doesn't rise even to the level of last year's "An Affair of Love," let alone Bertolucci's masterpiece.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Authentically British or not, Intimacy is squarely in the indigenous kitchen-sink style -- a far cry from the absurdly chic, sentimental pseudo-worldliness of something like "An Affair of Love."