Sanctuary
*Seen at the 2023 Atlanta Film Festival.
There were more than a few times I was truly mortified by the directions “Sanctuary” seemed to be taking, especially with the character of Rebecca, played by Margaret Qualley. Whenever sex work or ended relationships are involved, there’s a danger of making the woman or sex worker out to be an opportunist or a crazy person obsessed, and Micah Bloomberg’s skirts up to that at times where it was almost embarrassing to consider. Once you realize the film is all one game between Rebecca and Hal (Christopher Abbott), the dark humor of Zachary Wigon’s film takes over, and even if you have a hard time buying every direction the film takes, you roll with it, because honestly, Qualley and Abbott earn it.
The most striking moments of the film come from the front, when Rebecca comes to Hal’s hotel room to discuss him taking over the family business, which is to be heir to his late father’s hotel empire. Qualley wears the blonde wig strikingly well, and as the scene plays out, we see it is a role play Hal has set up between them. This scene is as tantalizing a use of sexuality as an actor has utilized in many years, on Qualley’s front, and it’s all in her mannerisms and performance; all the nudity- such as it is- is on Abbott’s side, and this is indicative of the power dynamics throughout the film. It turns out, Hal has set this up to be their final time meeting- after all, the CEO of a company shouldn’t really be keeping company with sex workers. Rebecca is not ready to say goodbye, though, and she’s determined to get something for the time she’s spent molding Hal into the man he is today.
If you have some pause with that last sentence, I don’t blame you- throughout the middle section of “Sanctuary,” the film wades in some dicey thematic material about the jilted lover and sex worker stereotypes that favor men. I don’t know that the film’s wicked conclusion quite absolves it from how it got there, but the film entertained me greatly. That is all due to the film’s seductive look- whether it’s the cinematography by Ludovica Isidori or Jason Singleton’s production design- the score by Ariel Marx, and the performances. Qualley is an actress that exudes intelligence, and layers in her characters, whether it’s the hippie Manson girl in “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” or the reporter in “Stars at Noon.” Here, she uses that intelligence to give us a sense of the thought process Rebecca is going through as this meeting with Hal is going on. She’s blindsided by some things, but always finds a way to get back the upper hand from Hal. As for Abbott, we see Hal as clearly as Rebecca does in that first scene, and we’re waiting for him to show he’s up to the task of taking her on. Just about every time he does get the upper hand is by sheer luck because Rebecca has overplayed hers, but even at the end, she has his number. The status quo between them has changed, but the dynamics haven’t. That’s one of the reasons why- for all its potential landmines- “Sanctuary” leaves us satisfied by the end; it understands these characters at their hearts, and so do we.
