Sex is war—and, also, a venue for kinky and cutthroat competition—in Sanctuary, critic-turned-filmmaker Zachary Wigon’s steamy comedic thriller, which made a splash at last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival and is now set to heat up screens beginning May 19.
Set in a lavish suite over the course of one evening, Wigon’s sophomore feature concerns Hal (Christopher Abbott), the heir to his late father’s hotel empire, and Rebecca (Margaret Qualley), who arrives at his door posing as a corporate emissary tasked with conducting a screening interview in advance of Hal’s takeover.
What soon becomes clear, however, is that Rebecca is no suit; rather, she’s Hal’s favorite dominatrix, there to act out one of their pre-planned encounters. When it comes to this duo, however, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as Wigon slowly peels back his protagonists’ layers to reveal a twisted relationship that’s equal parts hostile, erotic, and loving.
Scene to scene, moment to moment, insult to insult, Sanctuary is a film that constantly surprises its audience, and while credit for its unpredictability goes to Micah Bloomberg’s rug-pulling script and Wigon’s deft choreography, its electricity is all Qualley and Abbott, whose rapport is a thing of alternately playful and barbed beauty.
As individuals on opposite sides of the privilege divide who are intent on fighting for power, wealth and status, the actors—whether humiliating, castigating or fawning over each other—prove an intensely torrid pair, their chemistry as antagonistic as it is desperate and compassionate. Playing characters whose motivations are never wholly apparent, Qualley and Abbott make for a transfixing duo, infusing Wigon’s two-hander with the amusing friskiness of a screwball comedy and the cutting nastiness of a David Mamet drama.
Sanctuary is proof that Wigon is a rising talent to watch and, moreover, that Qualley and Abbott are two of Hollywood’s most agile and compelling young stars. On the cusp of the film’s theatrical bow, we spoke with both of them about developing their protagonists’ uniquely unhinged dynamic, the sexiness of keeping actual sex to a bare minimum, the tameness of modern Hollywood, and maintaining affectionate humor amidst mounting psychosexual horror.
When you both signed onto Sanctuary, were there any concerns about chemistry issues? Because with a film like this, if you don't share sparks, the entire thing doesn't work.
Abbott: Also—if there’s no chemistry, it’s not fun to work on. It’s not fun to do, even aside from the end product of the film. But Margaret and I knew each other already and we had been wanting to find something to work together on, and this film was the perfect script and opportunity to do so. Margaret was already attached, and Margaret and Zach, the director, brought it to me, and I just read it right away and said yes right away.
We hadn’t really worked together yet, but we sort of knew there would be the right level of chemistry with each other.
Qualley: I’d been wanting to work with Chris for a while, and when I read it, it seemed like the perfect thing to do with him. He was Zach’s first choice by a long shot too, so it came together really fast.
Did you rehearse beforehand, to develop that chemistry?
Qualley: We didn’t do much rehearsal. I think we read through the script once at Chris’ apartment and once at my apartment. Then we just prepped on our own and basically, we just learned the script front to back, like a play, before we started. We shot the whole movie in 18 days and just had one-day weekends, so it was really a marathon once we began. It was nice to be able to feel really comfortable with the language so that on the day, we could just play. My favorite thing to do in life is to talk to people and have conversations and listen to people, and he’s [Chris] the most fascinating person to listen to, so it made my job really easy.
Abbott: Also, Zach had such a specific way that he wanted to shoot and choreograph these scenes, and we knew that going into it. For Margaret and me, our job, academically, is to just know the lines, so that we can choreograph scenes in terms of working with each other and being present with each other, but also very much work with the camera and its movements. Ludovica [Isidori], who shot it, did so brilliantly. The camera is like a third character the whole time, with us.
How does that process play out, where you have to learn to work not only with each other but also with Zach’s meticulous staging?
Qualley: Some directors shoot a lot and give themselves options in the edit and don’t know exactly what the movie is until they’re editing, and that was certainly not the case with Zach. It was kind of edited upon arrival, in the sense that most of the scenes had very minimal coverage; maybe it was one shot or, at most, two. It was all precisely choreographed, like Chris said.
But in a weird way, removing all the options and having it to be so precise and specific gives you a whole different freedom, you know? Because you know where you’re standing, you know when you’re going to walk, you know what you’re saying, and you know that when your head’s looking here on this point, then the camera is here. It’s so meticulously arranged that the only thing you have to worry about is how you’re saying the things. You can be hyper alert and hyper aware of each other.
Zachary only had one feature to his name before this. What was it about him that made you confident about signing onto the film?
Abbott: I think it’s the way he talks about it. He was very clear from the beginning, when we met and spoke about it. His ideas already seemed fleshed out about how he wanted to shoot it, and exactly what he wanted to do. And the product of what we did was what he said he was intending to do. He’s also a cinephile who’s seen a lot of movies, and that’s always an important thing.
I’ve done a lot of people’s first and second features, and that’s usually the gauge. I like Zach’s first movie very much, but sometimes maybe you have to give someone the benefit of the doubt when they’ve only made one film, because there’s budget constraints and probably there were things that they were fighting. Sometimes you have to pick out and see certain things in someone’s first film to know what they can do next and how they’re going to improve. Zach had all that.
Qualley: I also think it comes down to how much someone loves movies. I know Quentin Tarantino has said something along the lines of, if you love cinema the way that he does, it’s impossible to make a bad movie. Zach certainly loves movies and is very passionate, and when it’s their whole life, it’s reassuring.
Sanctuary is, in part, about sexualized role-playing and sticking to/going off-script. Do you view it—or did you talk about it—as a movie about movie-making and, more specifically, about acting?
Qualley: I always end up talking about those types of concepts and themes more in the press than in the making of things [laughs]. Intellectualizing the movie with you and figuring out what it means for you, or dissecting it. But in the reality of it, I’m not there.
Abbott: The acting part of it—the fact that these characters are playing roles themselves—it was just fun to play with the levels of how good of actors they are within the context of the roles that they’re playing. I think there’s a lot of room for comedy in moments like that, when both the audience and the characters are aware they’re playing a role. There’s a lot of layers there.
Was it important to maintain the (cruel, antagonistic, mocking) humor in the film, which is so central to its action?
Qualley: I hope that everything I do is funny in some way; otherwise, what’s the point of anything? [laughs] But I think Chris really does the heavy lifting there, in terms of comedic relief in the movie. I’m just painfully earnest.
Abbott: But I think what is funnier is when you’re earnest in it. The writing sort of takes care of that itself, in a way, as long as you just commit to it seriously. I think any scene in this movie could be laughed at, or with. So of course we had that in mind. But you can’t play that. You can’t necessarily play up the comedy. If you just commit to it, it’ll be funnier.
Was part of the attraction that the film is so sexual—and at times so dirty, in terms of talk and subject matter—and yet it features no explicit nudity and relatively little physical contact?
Qualley: I think that’s always way hotter. Almost kissing is the hottest it gets.
Abbott: There’s a lot that’s left open to the imagination for the audience, too. I think that for what the move is, it doesn’t need to go down that road. It’s not being tame for the sake of being tame. I just think that for this style, the movie is very much a rom-com, right? More so than it is a ’90s sexy thriller. It has those elements in there, so you can play with the genre in that way for the audience. But I think ultimately, it’s a rom-com.
The film is extremely steamy, and arrives at a moment when there’s a lot of talk, at least online, about the lack of on-screen sex. Given that you’ve both recently made eroticized films—Margaret with Stars at Noon, Christopher with Piercing—do you find yourselves particularly attracted to those types of projects – maybe because there are so few of them around today?
Abbott: I always like movies that can push it a little bit more. This is a very broad generalization, but yeah, lately, especially in American cinema, you can sort of blanket things as being a little more puritan. There are obviously examples where that’s not the case, but generally, things do feel a bit more timid in that way. And this movie is not quite that either. But I do like movies that go for it in that way. It’s not to be contrarian; I just think it’s easy to lose sight of real human behavior and real Id and real human psyche without the darker stuff. But not doing it just for the sake of it. There has to be a good reason.
Sanctuary is getting a wide release, which is now relatively uncommon for a smaller adult film. Do you feel confident that such movies can still exist in today's landscape—and is that part of the reason to make them?
Qualley: I feel like I’m never thinking that far ahead. I’m more just like, wow, this was awesome, I want to do it! I’m making my decisions from that place. Then if people see it, that’s so great. And if they don’t, then, hopefully I had fun!
Abbott: But it’s even more of a reason to do movies like this.
Qualley: Yeah.
Abbott: It’s not more fearful because they might not get seen; it’s even more reason to jump on. And it’s all totally out of your control. We’re at a time where we’re oversaturated anyway with tons of stuff, so when you get an opportunity to do—for lack of a better term—a “smaller movie” like this, and it’s going to get made, why not take the jump?
Did you watch any particular movies to prepare for Sanctuary? Or does that interfere with your preparation?
Qualley: I don’t have any strict rules for myself, but I remember Zach mentioning His Girl Friday as a good movie to watch, to influence the language. Which I thought was a fun reference.
Abbott: I didn’t watch anything in preparation for this, but I’ve seen a lot of movies, so inherently, just knowing the tone of it, there are other references. Subconsciously, I probably steal—whether it’s a tone or a style—from other movies that I’ve seen. But I’m not trying to consciously do it. There’s a lot of Korean cinema that comes to mind with this movie, especially the visual elements of it—like The Housemaid. There’s that, and then there’s the screwball comedy, as Margaret was saying. It’s a weird remix of those two for me.
As you said, Christopher, we’re all oversaturated these days, including with television, which you’ve both also done. Do you feel compelled to stick to one or the other, or is it simply about what projects become available?
Qualley: It’s about how things come, and who wants me to be in their thing [laughs]. Who’s hiring me!
Abbott: I like going to the movies, so I always feel like I lean toward the movies in some way, as a preference. But it does come down to the part and the story and who’s directing. I’m in no way shunning television. But I like the act of going to a movie. If I can do more of that so I can go see myself in it, then I will.
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