Brutal Intimacy
Chapter 5 begins with risk sociology’s understanding of intimacy as “a dogmatism for two” to explore an interdisciplinary mix of theory, including Tim Palmer’s analysis of the cinema of “brutal intimacy”; Tanya Modleski’s recognition of a current horror genre inflection of new desires for unleashing sexuality, violence, and control; Kelley Conway’s recognition of an authorship of considerable diversity in the context of films made by women about female sexuality in French culture; Raymond Williams’s concept of historical “structures of feeling”; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s “normal chaos of love”; and Giddens’s “transformation of intimacy.” Within these contexts, the films Twentynine Palms, Trouble Every Day, and Irréversible are analyzed textually, exploring genre, narrative, visual shot style, diegetic/non-diegetic sound, and spatial mapping (and the disruption of all these categories), with a particular focus on the road film Twentynine Palms.