Feature movie review: Sanctuary 

• Neon Films

There are plenty of reasons why pearl-clutching reactionaries shouldn't have much say in anything having to do with art, but one of the best is that certain subject matter is almost certain to have them focusing entirely on whatever surface-level material might give them the heebie-jeebies. Usually it's gender and/or sexuality, sometimes it's religion, but the common thread is folks reading a one-sentence synopsis and requiring no additional context or information to be certain that the book/movie/TV show/whatever in question is meritless and obscene. It's the aesthetic equivalent of ignoring those social-media site pleas of "would you like to read this article before commenting on it?"

Take, for example, the case of Sanctuary, which seems to scream "lurid" in the most rudimentary description of its premise: "A dominatrix tries to keep a wealthy client from firing her." If you paid attention only to that synopsis, it's entirely possible you'd miss what's percolating deeper in Micah Bloomberg's screenplay: The question of how you deal with a disconnect between the way people expect you to present yourself to the world, and the person that, in you heart of hearts, you know that you truly are.

So yeah, it's nominally that story of "a dominatrix tries to keep a wealthy client from firing her." We meet Hal Porterfield (Christopher Abbott) in a fancy hotel suite, and Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) as she arrives for what initially seems to be a legal errand for Hal's company. But it's all a scripted scenario, as Rebecca proceeds to humiliate and denigrate Hal on the floor of his bathroom. Hal soon tells her that this has to be their last encounter, as his planned ascension to the CEO role for his company following the death of his father could be compromised if his peccadilloes were public—which is all that Rebecca needs to hear to start making it clear to Hal that she's not interested in going quietly.

The psychological drama that emerges from that point is almost entirely the kind of two-hander that could have originated as a one-act stage play, and director Zachary Wigon only occasionally over-complicates the direction with stuff like turning the camera upside-down, or marking scene transitions with blurry color fields. He's certainly effective at guiding the performances, however, leaning into the shifting power dynamics of his two characters. Abbott nails the anxiety of a scion of wealth terrified at the prospect of having to live up to the standards of his successful father and being exposed as a failson with a fetish kink; think of it as the lustier version of a certain prestige cable drama, a Sexcession if you will.

Qualley, meanwhile, is an absolute force of nature as Rebecca, bringing a ferocious energy to a character who is fundamentally an actor. Wigon captures her in moments when she's basically doing warm-up exercises, and trying to decide at any given moment what angle she can work to get what she wants from Hal. Qualley has been a magnetic screen presence for a while already, but Sanctuary marks the kind of performance where she feels like a legitimate star.

Both of those performances become most effective because they're serving a story that's not fundamentally about dominance & submission, or even the tug-of-war between wealth and workers. Sanctuary is a movie about identity—and more specifically, about closeted identity. Neither Bloomberg nor Wigon might have planned it directly as a metaphor for queer experience, but it absolutely works that way, since Hal's basic fear is that he will be seen for who he really is, and rejected on that basis. And Rebecca similarly uses her particular genre of sex work as a way to exercise a sense of power she otherwise feels is denied to her, as a woman and as a laborer.

So while Sanctuary includes sex, it's not about sex, nor is it salacious. I'd argue that as much as it's a psychological drama, it's actually also a romantic comedy, including all of the requisite obstacles to our protagonists' "will they or won't they." In fact, it's about the kind of love story that everyone deserves—one where you know someone really loves you, because you've shown them every part of yourself that you've been afraid to show other people, and they love you all the same.