Intimate Relations (1997)

Intimate Relations is a 1996 Canadian-British film, the first movie by writer and director Philip Goodhew. It stars Rupert Graves, Julie Walters and a fifteen-year-old Laura Sadler, the only feature film in her short career. The film is a drama and black comedy about a young man who has an affair with the middle-aged housewife he is lodging with. Matters are soon complicated when the housewife's teenage daughter gets involved after developing a crush on the young lodger.

The film takes place in the 1950s in the suburbs of London. The film depicts the hypocritically prudish residents of a seemingly respectable household who, behind closed doors, indulge in the sort of sordid goings on they would publicly sneer at.

Synopsis

Marjorie Beaslie (Walters) is a housewife in her forties who takes in a lodger named Harold Guppey (Graves), who has just stumbled into town to look up his long-lost brother (played by Les Dennis). Although seemingly prudish (she no longer sleeps in the same bed as her husband, for "medical reasons"), Marjorie takes a liking to Harold despite him being a good twenty years her junior. They begin to have a clandestine affair, sneaking into bed together at night. Ever since taking in her lodger, Marjorie insists that Harold refer to her as "mum", giving more than a little oedipal slant to their subsequent lustful antics.

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