Exploring intimacy as strategy, desire as distortion and relationships as battleground
This week’s watchlist slips into the shadowed corners of intimacy – where love isn’t soft, and power doesn’t shout. These five films explore the tension between affection and control, seduction and strategy, vulnerability. Whether set in royal courts, suburban homes or haunted apartments, each story reveals how relationships can become arenas for dominance, defiance and emotional warfare.
The Favourite (2018) Yorgos Lanthimos
- Mood: Baroque absurdity, aristocratic cruelty.
- Why it Belongs: In Queen Anne’s court, love is a political tool. Sarah and Abigail battle for affection and influence using seduction, manipulation and emotional theatre. The film’s lavish visuals mask a brutal power struggle – where intimacy is weaponised and loyalty is transactional.
- Styling Cues: Powdered faces, candlelit corridors, emotional chess moves.
Blue Valentine (2010) Derek Cianfrance
- Mood: Raw, non-linear, emotionally exposed.
- Why it Belongs: Dean and Cindy’s relationship unfolds in fragments – courtship and collapse braided together. Their love erodes under the weight of unmet expectations and emotional imbalance. Power shifts through silence, memory and the inability to grow together.
- Styling Cues: Handheld intimacy, motel rooms, faded tattoos and wedding songs.
Revolutionary Road (2008) Sam Mendes
- Mood: Suburban suffocation, existential despair.
- Why it Belongs: Frank and April Wheeler dream of escape, but their marriage becomes a trap. Love is performative and power is gendered. Their rebellion against conformity turns inward, exposing the fragility of self-hood within domestic roles.
- Styling Cues: Muted palettes, mid-century interiors, emotional distance in close quarters.
Possession (1981) Andrzej Żuławski
- Mood: Surreal, violent, psychologically unhinged.
- Why it Belongs: Mark and Anna’s marriage implodes in a frenzy of betrayal, obsession and supernatural horror, love becomes monstrous and power manifests through doppelgangers, body horror and emotional collapse.
- Styling Cues: Cold Berlin architecture, blood on tile, mirrored madness.
The Handmaiden (2016) Park Chan-wook
- Mood: Erotic, deceptive, liberating.
- Why it Belongs: In Japanese occupied Korea, Sook-hee and Hideka navigate a labyrinth of lies, lust and liberation. What begins as a con becomes a reclamation. Love is layered with betrayal, but ultimately becomes a tool of escape and empowerment.
- Styling Cues: Cherry blossoms, silk robes, erotica as resistance.
When love and power collides, the result is rarely gentle. Romance isn’t always soft. Sometimes it’s sharp, calculated and quietly devastating. These stories reveal the fault lines beneath intimacy – where control masquerades as care and vulnerability becomes leverage.
This week’s watchlist reminds us: intimacy isn’t always tender, sometimes it’s tactical.
Ronin Cinema 