Review of the film "Stop Word" by Zachary Wigon
Directed by Zachary Wigon, Sanctuary is an unconventional variant of a romantic comedy in which not emotions or even the sexual attraction of the characters to each other come to the fore, but games with social statuses, the balance of power and control in a pair. However, in the end, as Yulia Shagelman, it all comes down to the conclusion that happiness is when you are understood.
Perhaps the first film to frankly connect the themes of capitalism, consumption, sex and relationships and slip this explosive mixture to the public in the packaging of a romantic comedy was Garry Marshall's Pretty Woman (1990). In this Cinderella tale modernized in accordance with its era, a ruthless businessman earning millions in raider seizures acted as a handsome prince, a sex worker became a princess, and scenes of rampant shopping stimulated the viewer's imagination almost more than erotic ones. And in just a week of a stormy romance, a man learned to slowly let go of control and not be afraid of his own vulnerability, and a woman, on the contrary, to take her life into her own hands, regardless of whether a knight in a sparkling white limousine would come for her.
Zachary Wigon's second directorial effort, for which Micah Bloomberg reworked his one-act play into a screenplay, at times, consciously or not, seems like a homage to Pretty Woman. We again have a couple of a rich man (only here he is not a businessman, but the heir to a hotel empire, but he has even more complexes that grew out of a relationship with a dominant father) and a sex worker, and they spend not 90% in the confined space of a hotel room screen time, and all 96 minutes. At one point, dominatrix Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) even takes off her blonde wig, revealing wild brown curls, just like the heroine of Julia Roberts.
However, the dynamics in the pair is not at all the same as more than 30 years ago. Rebecca knows the value of herself and her services. She sells not the body, but the fantasy, bringing clients to ecstasy without a single touch and in complete control of the situation. For Hal (Christopher Abbott), their “sessions,” for which they have been dating for years, are the only way to be himself or the version of himself that he feels comfortable in, because outside of a luxurious room that looks like a jewelry case, he is all the time must play one role or another: for his father, who recently passed away, for his mother, for the board of directors of the company, which he must now head.
The film also begins with a role-playing game: a "lawyer" of a large corporation is interviewing a new manager, however, the questionnaire consists of exclusively intimate questions. Then the script changes, and now the “manager” is rubbing the floor in the bathroom with a napkin, listening with pleasure to the humiliating comments of his mistress, but these hypostases will not be the last that the heroes will try on. Gradually, the boundaries between the game and reality are blurred: does Hal really want to end their relationship due to his changed status, and the wounded Rebecca in response threatens to reveal the truth about them to the whole world? Or is this another twist on a prearranged plan? At what point does the performance end and improvisation begin, and real emotions replace feigned emotions?
The authors play with us as masterly as the characters with each other, juggling class, social and gender issues, which are approached with fresh and unbanal humor. At the same time, together with the actors who made up an impeccable duet, they charge the picture with erotic electricity - without a single frame of nudity, only with the help of dialogues, expressive close-ups and a constantly changing alignment of forces, when the one who in one second seems to be the winner in this duel of minds, characters , freedoms, money and privileges, the next loses everything. But this is exactly the case when it is not victory that is important, but participation - both in a pair, no matter how different from the generally accepted conventions, enjoy it, and with them the audience, if, of course, they are ready to leave prejudices behind the threshold cinema hall.