Who's on top, and what will be left of them? That sensual variation to the tagline for the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie is a snug fit for director Zachary Wigon's incisive battles-of-the-sexes thriller, Sanctuary.
Christopher Abbott stars as the sub to Margaret Qualley's dominatrix, who smacks some sense into (and some cents out of) him over the course of several hours in a hotel room. Touching is verboten, but scarring one's psyche is fair game.
Abbott plays Hal, the prince-like son of a recently deceased hotelier and industry titan. The family is of the Hilton sort: impossibly wealthy, privileged, and scandalous. But with his father's demise, the family franchise (and the billions that come with it) is about to become Hal's and Hal's alone. In fact, later this day his mother is set to throw a celebratory dinner in his honor where the passing of the torch will become official. And so Hal not only now owns the hotel room where he and his favorite dominatrix play, he owns the hotel and the entire hotel chain. It might as well be the entire world. All the better privacy-wise — lots of nooks to do dirty business in.
But before he's crowned king of the hotel chain, Hal has some to attend to some dirty business of the personal sort. Some papers to sign, nudge nudge wink wink. Rebecca (Qualley), all buttoned-up and blonde, arrives with a briefcase and some stern words about what a bad, bad business boy Hal's been. And before you know it, she's running a finger along the mantle for shameful dust and Hal's on all fours, panting in his underpants beside the toilet bowl. One edged-out orgasm later, turns out it's all been a script of self-plotted humiliation that Hal wrote for himself and Rebecca, who teases the role out to a perfect ten.
Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott play each other — and us.
Not that it's a big ah-ha, revelatory moment — Sanctuary knows you know this opening segment is a fetishized ruse. Qualley's shoddy wig should give the game right away, but the movie still has some fun with it. That trap-door feeling, personalities nested within other personalities, sets the stage for the rollercoaster of one-upmanship for the rest of the ride. Hal says this will be their last meeting, that he’s got to go be a proper adult man now, and we see something in Rebecca shift. Is it anger? Legitimate heartbreak? What starts out as a goodbye gets drawn out to its furthest reaches.
Or does it? Just how much is "the game," as they call it? It will all become purposefully opaque as Rebecca’s motives and moods swing about, and Rebecca’s needling more fearsome and sweaty by the scene. Right around the time she starts teasing that Hal's been the unsuspecting star of his own hidden-camera show, the dams doth spill over – if this is part of "the game," then its borders are bursting.
So the power-play dynamics of the rich and masochistic aren't just for the Succession set! Everybody's doing it these days; it’s a more popular pastime than ever since we had that spoiled rich-baby family soiling up the White House for four rotten years. Again and again, we use our entertainment to sort sense in vain from the wealthy and those who definitely do not deserve said wealth, ad nauseam. And no doubt as the billionaires hoard more and more, we're only going to get more and more vicarious takedowns — more Triangle of Sadnesses, more The Menus. Sanctuary feels like those sprawling ideas vacuum-sealed down into a smaller, more suffocating and claustrophobic container: My Dinner With Dominatrix.
As the two move about the suite, their interplay shifting with the wind, we’re left to suss out who's the top and who's the bottom in any given moment. And as such, who's really controlling the world? And the structures that keep us in check are revealed for the act of faith, the emperor's clothes, that they are. Strip down the empty suits to the sad boys beneath.
Keeping things contained, Sanctuary proves more can be less.
Actors (and those who love to watch actors work) love this sort of whittled-down chamber piece: two people, one room, and endless variations on a theme bounced back and forth between them. Indeed, this is the second of this exact sort of man-versus-woman showdown that Christopher Abbott himself has starred in from just the past five years. If you haven't seen it go watch 2018's Piercing, which saw him and Mia Wasikowska play-acting out this same sort of dynamic, only with a load more violence; plus, it felt slightly more honest in that Abbott's representation of modern heterosexual manhood was also a serial killer.
Abbott is real good at this sort of thing, with those bedroom cow-eyes of his, black as tar. Unknowable. Punchable. And Qualley, her current star rising like the sun seen from six inches away, proves a formidable partner. She's never resembled her mother, Andie MacDowell, more than she does here, and the specter of sex lies and videotape looms large in Sanctuary's backdrop. You can feel Sanctuary aiming for that exact sultry yet sinister moment-defining dialogue – the "this is what heterosexuality looks like right now!" of it. And Qualley adds charm and complications every chance she gets. Nothing here is simple, nothing here is easy, nothing here is pain- or ecstasy-free.
There's chemistry for days between these two. Their tête-à-tête thrums with fire. They bounce off the walls, never exactly the same person with the same motivations from scene to scene. And you're never sure who they're putting the big show on for: the other one, us, or their own sorry selves. Up, down, shaken, stirred – they'll have you feeling horny and humiliated for feeling it by hairpin turns.
The liminal space of hotel rooms has been the playground for more storytelling than I could count on ten thousand hands. As they are hotbeds of anonymity, we can be who we wanna be under those stiff sheets, washing whatever sticky liquids off with that single-serving bar of soap. Sanctuary teases that idea out in its very title — a respite and an oasis with mints on the pillow — and then undercuts it cleverly at every turn. So, if you're down to watch two fine actors play around in that playground for 96 cooped-up and penetrating minutes, I won't judge you for it. Not unless you’re into that sort of thing, anyway.
Sanctuary opens in theaters, beginning May 19.
