I have started too many reviews belabouring how much a love a movie set in one room.
Sanctuary is a great one. All the drama and tension is based purely on power dynamics - role play, gender, sex, economics.
Maybe it is Qualley’s initial presentation (blonde bowl cut, power suit) but this film comes across as a riff on the early nineties thrillers about men dealing with the gradual shift toward a more inclusive workspace.
While certain elements recall a nineties erotic thriller, it never descends into a good-evil binary thriller.
I was expecting something conventional (and puritan in its sense of gender roles and sex). It is genuinely high-stakes and emotionally exposing for the characters.
Qualley and Abbott are terrific together.
Maybe I need to watch more of his work but Abbott has such an inherent sense of weakness - it is like his essence is naturally low status.
It feels like he has a chip on his shoulder, constantly struggling against his own desired state of being. He brings a tension that makes the movie by turns scarier and sillier.
Margaret Qualley keeps you on edge for different reasons. Despite those big eyes, she never comes off as an innocent or
dumb. She always seems to play against that - there is something knowing, playful about her as she toys with this man child.
Even as she seems to be cornered, that knowingness, and Abbott’s shaky attempts at forcefulness keep their power imbalance constantly oscillating.
Despite its single setting, and the focus on the two performances, Sanctuary never feels stage-bound, and never loses steam.
The film is like a fight scene, as two veteran fighters use every trick and secret they know about each other to win the bout.
It is hair-raising, often hilarious and occasionally sexy.
After watching this pair interrogate their own dynamic, where everything has been thrown up in the air, the film’s ending, with the pair finding bliss as a heterosexual couple, feels a little neat and safe.
Small quibble. A fun watch.
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