Inside a luxurious, 45th-floor hotel suite, a young, blonde-haired lawyer visits the anxious heir to a hotel empire and begins a business meeting. Armed with a briefcase of documents, Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) runs Hal (Christopher Abbott) through a questionnaire as he prepares to take over his late father's company. But the legal formalities take a hard pivot when Rebecca begins asking about his height, weight, and sexual history. It's not long before she demands that he strip half-naked in the bathroom and scrub the back of the toilet, all while she watches from a chair, reveling in her client's belittled efforts. Though she deviates a bit, Rebecca is just following the script that Hal has written, verbally sparring and embarrassing him without physical contact until she lets him masturbate and climax on the floor.
That's how Sanctuary, a sly, sleek, sexy two-hander from director Zachary Wigon and writer Micah Bloomberg, starts its riveting dialectic about power, performance, and identity. When the charade ends (she removes her wig, he puts on his shirt), the pair gorges on some room-service dinner before Hal gifts her a $32,000 watch and informs his longtime dominatrix that he'll no longer need her services. After years of enlisting Rebecca to act out his darkest psychological fantasies, he believes he must rid himself of any sordid liabilities ahead of owning his father's business. "What we do is so meaningful," he tells her. "But it's just not something that goes with the next stage of my life."
Initially puzzled, Rebecca ultimately agrees to end her professional relationship, but after pausing by the elevator, she gets an epiphany. |
