Directed by Patrice Chéreau
119 minutes
In French with English subtitles

Once every week a woman named Claire knocks on the door of Jay's apartment. He lets her in, and, after a few moments of awkward readjustment, they throw their clothes to the floor and engage in feral sex. Based on stories by British-Pakistani novelist Hanif Kureishi, it follows Jay who becomes emotionally connected to Claire, and wants to know more about her secret life. So he follows her in the city streets, and learns that she has a husband and child… and the movie shoots off from there. It is erotic, painful, sensual, confrontational, complex.

This movie stars Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox in the key roles, and when the film was first screened it became notoriously hyped because of its real sex scenes that were unsimulated. But let's not get carried away -  even though the fact that the film contains real sex scenes opens it to a kind of sensationalism, because the sex is real, it also opens the film to scenes of  awkwardness, and moments of incredible tenderness. My suggestion is not to get stuck on the idea that it's real sex, because such an attitude can cheapen the movie, but the fact is that it's great that the sex is real because it exposes moments that you normally never see in movies...  Especially in porn movies. In this movie real emotions are involved, which knock it to a higher level. 

Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox are both beautiful and fascinating in their roles. Then there's also Marianne Faithfull and Timothy Spall to round it all off. The film has a punchy and moody soundtrack mostly composed of British music at the turn of the century… Tindersticks, The Clash, David Bowie, Nick Cave, etc. 

When the movie came out in the film festivals, it was a sensation, picking up major awards. But when it was released into the cinemas in the United States and in the UK, it got  many mixed reviews. Why? Well, one reason is obvious -  in both America and the UK the film was heavily censored, so nobody was watching the real film, not even the critics. But actually, it's a critic's job to tell, for example, an American audience, that the movie was censored… But this is something they never do, so nobody even knows censorship is going on in the country.