INTIMATE RELATIONS

Based on a true story, INTIMATE RELATIONS is a British import about domestic relationships going beyond sour, into adultery, perversity and obsessive behavior resulting in death. Advertised as a comedy, it is a twisted and uninvolving story that ends up dark and mean-spirited.

Rupert Graves, best known as Freddy in the Merchant/Ivory film ROOM WITH A VIEW, stars as Harold Guppy, a young man in 1954 England who seeks a place to live, or lodge. He moves into an empty room of a house run by a mousy 50-year-old woman named Marjorie Beasley (Julie Waters). Marjorie has a one-legged, weak-willed husband who sleeps in another rooms “for medical purposes” and an inquisitive 13-year-old daughter Joyce (Laura Sadler). It isn’t long before Marjorie makes late night visits to her handsome Harold, telling him that she is a very lonely woman. Harold obliges Marjorie, and soon Joyce figures out about the illicit affair and desires her own sexual experiences with Harold. All the while, Marjorie keeps this secret from not only her husband, but the community by condemning other young ladies on their sexual indiscretions.

Harold eventually seeks to escape this maddening household and joins the army. There, he falls in love with a young woman and tries to make a fresh start. However, Marjorie blackmails Harold and says if he doesn’t come home where he belongs, than she will give a false report him to the police about him sexually molesting the underage Joyce. Harold returns to tell Marjorie to stop, but she takes advantage of his return and seduces Harold. Harold, sick of the perversity, still submits to Marjorie’s manipulations. On a picnic outing, Joyce, who has her own perverse attraction to Harold, attacks her mother with an ax and blood is shed, resulting in death.

Black comedy is a tricky genre because all too often, as in this case, the unsavory acts and comedy don’t mix. The best black comedy mixes the two, and moral audiences may buy into a black comedy if it isn’t too graphic and the violence or darkness can be dramatically justified as the results of sinful behavior. In INTIMATE RELATIONS, the movie embraces the perversity of Marjorie and Harold’s affair. It even smiles down on Joyce’s misplaced interest in Harold. The fun and games of these perversities are accompanied by a bouncy soundtrack. Then, without warning, the movie goes sour with these same relationships. The movie becomes not dark comedy, but just dark, twisted and mean-spirited. Like THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE and THE TIE THAT BINDS, it becomes a slasher movie set in the usually warm setting of normal domestic relationships.

Viewers beware. This is a movie about a woman who has shunned normal relations with her husband to take advantage of a lodger and then insists that she will blackmail him if he tries to get out of it. The lodger, in turn, reluctantly submits to her sexual desires, making him pathetic. He appears powerless to change. Likewise, the daughter wants to get in on the sexual hijinks, making this not just a movie about forbidden love, but an incestuous menage-a-trios. This is very bitter material, not easy to fashion into a marketable and palatable story.

Perhaps, this mediocre movie was released in America because art house patrons appreciate British drama and the pedigree of the actors seems classy enough. Screened at a normal, theatrical release, a representative from Fox Searchlight asked the audience if they would write down their comments about the movie and give them to her after the show. Perhaps, Fox Searchlight didn’t want to take the time and money to do a proper focus group before its release and is hoping that its sophisticated New York audience would provide some sort of meter as to how the rest of the country might perceive this wicked little film. Judging by the responses, INTIMATE RELATIONS, no matter how bouncy or shocking, will become quickly inaccessible to its suitors.