'Sanctuary' Review: A Sickly Twisted Chess Match Of Power
Margaret Qualley in Sanctuary. Courtesy of NEON.
Intense, twisted, perverted, power. These are the primary descriptors of Zachary Wigon’s Sanctuary, a feature that, for the most part, I truly enjoyed but found myself unsatisfied with at the end. We open on bold, swirling colors and a score that feels right off of Broadway —one of many of these moments of flashing color— before we enter the hotel room where, but for few scenes, the entire film takes place. Set in (mostly) real-time over the course of a single night, Sanctuary follows Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) and Hal (Christopher Abbott), her wealthy client that has just inherited the massive hotel chain that previously belonged to his father. We meet Rebecca and Hal at an interesting point in their night and their lives as a whole. When the film starts, we see Rebecca, with a business suit on and a blonde short hairdo, enter Hal’s room and begin a meeting that slowly becomes more of an interrogation. As their encounter evolves, we come to understand the true nature of their meeting: Rebecca is a dominatrix, and Hal hired her. The power dynamics between the two unfold as the scripted-non-scripted conversation and acts that occur become more and more unhinged until it all stops.
It doesn’t take long for us to understand what’s really going on when in the film’s first moment of deranged absurdity, we watch a half-naked Hal scrub dirt off of his bathroom floor with toilet paper while Rebecca watches and controls his every move. The film begins its overarching story when, after their session, Hal delivers Rebecca his news: he’s being promoted to CEO of his father’s hotel chain and is ending their frequent meetings. Rebecca doesn’t take this lightly and immediately starts revealing what tricks she has up her sleeve, as she can’t lose this job. When she resorts to blackmail, extortion, and oh so many worse things, it’s clear how far Rebecca is willing to go as she enters this battle of mental and physical stamina with Hal.
(L-R) Margaret Qualley & Christopher Abbott in Sanctuary. Courtesy of NEON.
Sanctuary is able to find strength in its outstanding lead performances from Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott. Qualley and Abbott give inherently different performances, both able to shine in different moments throughout the film. Qualley, due to the nature of her character, is the instant standout, commanding the screen throughout every beat in a delightfully sadistic manner. She’s given the script’s bigger swings, allowing her to push the boundaries of what the film —and character— can be, demonstrating the true tour de force she can be as a performer. For Abbott, his character is more restrained, the more submissive of the two. Abbott leans into this aspect of his character and plays it perfectly for the first two acts, but turns his energy to a 10 when, in the third act, he becomes fully unhinged, demonstrating the extent of his ability.
While a film like Sanctuary could be shot in a safe, restrained manner, not taking visual swings, cinematographer Ludovica Isidori makes sure to create frames from every angle of the small, contained space that these characters are existing in, using the camerawork to put us in the characters’ perspectives, using framing to demonstrate who’s in control at any given moment. This works in part due to the sharp, sadistic writing, but also because of the way in which we follow the story — not given all the information at once, constantly trying to grasp who truly has the upper hand.
(L-R) Margaret Qualley & Christopher Abbott in Sanctuary. Courtesy of NEON.
Sanctuary certainly knows when to rise and when to fall, creating a careful, not-so-slow build that takes us to the major crescendo: the resolution. At this point, we know these characters. Director Zachary Wigon has given us the puzzle pieces into what makes them tick and what they’re doing, but not fully why they’re doing it. This does lead to a fair amount of repetitive back-and-forth at the end of the second act and early third act, setting up where the film takes itself at the end. This ending does feel satisfyingly succinct, tying up loose ends and giving the audience a guess as to where these characters are headed. The only problem is that because it’s at such a lighter, less disgustingly perverted note than the previous 90 minutes, it feels almost wrong in the sense that what we’d watched was for nothing. Even though the characters are now “changed” from where they began, the ending simply feels too neat to belong as the closer to such a dirty film as Sanctuary.
Sanctuary arrives in theaters on May 19.
This review was made possible thanks to NEON who invited us to a preview screening of Sanctuary for review consideration.
