Intimacy (2001) review

Two strangers have verbally silent but still loud sex - imagine the sound of two middle-age asthmatics after running the 500 yard dash or that of two buffalo stuffed into a walk-in closet - every Wednesday at the same time until the man (Mark Rylance, who, like James Spader and Ralph Fiennes, seems to have a penchant for movies of this kind) follows the woman (Kerry Fox) home and discovers who she really is. Without the scenes of actual hardcore sex (it isn't a matter of "if" they actually "did it," it's "how often" they did it) to try to convince you this is much deeper (no pun intended) than it actually is, it barely registers on the artistic film radar - the exposition is one-note (Fox's character is poorly-defined and Rylance is made into a loathsome vagabond) and the film is at least twenty minutes too long. It's a poor man's Naked, and even Leigh regular Timothy Spall fails to register any sympathy as a blustering cuckold.