![]() It's Joyce who becomes the problem, though, as her awakening sexuality peeks her interest in what her mom and Harold are doing, and she soon threatens to tell everyone if Harold doesn't spend time with her. Soon he begins to enjoy his situation although he and Marjorie attempt to keep their affair a secret from Stanley. He can't believe this is happening, especially when Joyce crawls into bed with them, but Marjorie is determined. So the Beasley's take him in as a lodger, and soon Marjorie's trying to seduce him. When Harold Guppy (RUPERT GRAVES) returns to town after a long absence, he hopes to stay with his brother, Maurice (LES DENNIS) and sister-in-law Iris (ELIZABETH McKECHNIE), but they don't want to put him up. Stanley still relives his service in WWI where he lost a leg, and spends the rest of his time at the local pub drinking away his sorrows since he and Marjorie - his model housewife and professional seamstress - are no longer romantic. PLOT: Marjorie (JULIE WATERS) and Stanley Beasley (MATTHEW WALKER) live a typical suburban life in 1950's England with their thirteen-year-old daughter, Joyce (LAURA SADLER). Maintained by Boulevards New Media.QUICK TAKE: Black comedy: A lodger must deal with the affair he's having with a middle-aged woman while keeping her teenage daughter from telling her father. 1, 1997 issue of Metro.Ĭopyright © Metro Publishing Inc. Intimate Relations (R 105 min.), directed and written by Philip Goodhew, photographed by Andres Garreton and starring Julie Walters and Rupert Graves. Still, there's nothing funny about the grisly denouement that ironically made this "family" story an appealing film property. Goodhew's early precedent of one-upping each over-the-top bit of black-comic sleaze becomes a tall order, especially as the characters get down to some truly dirty business. The film's own progression from light to dark isn't nearly so smooth. And as this guy becomes increasingly scruffy and antagonistic, Graves shows off an impressive range. This love triangle gradually forms a noose around Harold's neck, as both mother and daughter turn to sexual blackmail in order to keep him around.ĭespite Harold's longing to be part of a family, Intimate Relations makes it clear that he is neither a victim nor a saint. Turns out she has a thing for the lodger, too. And after these two begin a nightly routine of pawing at each other like barn animals, the director gets a palpable kick out of revealing that precocious Joyce is lying alongside them in bed-with one eye open. During a debauched game of spin the bottle at a birthday party for Marjorie's 14-year-old daughter, Joyce (Laura Sadler), the camera takes the dizzy point of view of the bottle as it points to the lodger and "Mum," sealing their fate. ![]() Goodhew accentuates this sexual farce with some odd stylistic flourishes. Working part time in a laundromat, Marjorie jumps at the chance to take in a young lodger-Harold Guppy (Rupert Graves), a handsome man with a self-described violent temper-and then wastes little time jumping into his bed and literally begging him for love. ![]() She and her older husband, Stanley (Matthew Walker), a machine operator who lost a leg in WWI, maintain separate bedrooms "for medical purposes"-which is her polite way of saying that she can't stand to be near him. Julie Walters plays the bored housewife, Marjorie Beasley, as a middle-aged Englishwoman whose prim and proper manner barely conceals both despair and a ravenous sexual appetite. It's an outrageous, at times nasty, piece of work, humanized somewhat by a cast that isn't afraid to brea down and act up. First-time writer and director Philip Goodhew takes his basic approach from newspaper reports and classic film noir-bored housewife trysts with a lodger behind the back of her boring old husband-and adds all manner of cold sarcasm, camp humor and familial horror. LIKE PETER JACKSON'S Heavenly Creatures, the new British drama Intimate Relations offers a compellingly perverse spin on a true story of twisted family relations leading to murder in a '50s-era small town. 'Intimate Relations' mixes cold sarcasm with heated emotions The Artful Lodger: Rupert Graves takes a room and a whole lot more when he moves in with Julie Walters in 'Intimate Relations.' ![]()
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