Screenwriter Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid) and director Patrice Chereau (Queen Margot, Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train) combine to bring the British kitchen sink into the French boudoir. Or vice versa. Two Angst-ridden Londoners -- a bartender and a small-time actress, the latter currently appearing in a hole-in-the-wall production of The Glass Menagerie, both of them hiding a spouse and offspring in the wings -- meet on Wednesday afternoons for sessions of desperate, grim, grappling, clumsy, anonymous sex. (Extremely and embarrassingly graphic sex, too.) The lovers barely look one another in the eye, let alone speak. An air of puritanism prevails. No one is having much fun. In what might be termed his "real" life, the man, a frustrated musician with an autographed photo of John Lennon on the wall, stares into space, chugs on a beer, engages in incoherent wrangles at work, curls up in a fetal position, jerks off in the john with a pair of his wife's panties (interrupted by a knock on the door: "Daddy!"). For her part -- with less time to herself on screen -- the woman treats her acting class, of which she's supposed to be the teacher, to a histrionic meltdown that gives the students a sterling example if not any actual instruction. It's all a bit hair-tearingly ridiculous, but that doesn't mean the viewer, at least, can have some fun. Mark Rylance, Kerry Fox, Timothy Spall, Marianne Faithfull. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
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