People who come to BDSM films for a dungeon lesson, or for the look of the gear, get a different kind of room in Sanctuary, the 2022 dark-comedy psychological thriller. Zachary Wigon directed Micah Bloomberg’s script. Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott play an adult dominatrix and the long-term client who booked her. The story is not set in a dark cell. It is a luxury hotel suite: domination written out in advance, blackmail as performance, and a thin line between the role and the real feeling. Hal is about to become CEO of a major company. He and his dominatrix, Rebecca, have booked what is supposed to be their last session. It turns into a violent renegotiation of power, money, and attachment.
Humiliation inside the script, anxiety outside it
The film opens with Hal Porterfield ordering room service. Rebecca Marin arrives as if she were interviewing him for the CEO job at a hotel chain. The questions turn personal, and they come with sexual degradation. Rebecca is running the scene, but the script is one Hal wrote. She forces him to clean the bathroom in his underwear, then lets him climax. Over dinner they step out of character and talk about the real pressure of taking the CEO seat after his father’s death. Hal says the relationship no longer fits the life he is entering. He ends the arrangement and offers an expensive watch as a parting gift. Rebecca is offended. She leaves, then comes back, and uses management language from his father’s business book to argue that he is unfit for the job. She demands half of his first-year salary—four million dollars—as compensation, and she tells him she has recordings of their sessions. If he does not pay, she will leak them.
Sex at knifepoint, and attachment that will not stay in the contract
Hal pretends not to care, then tears the suite apart looking for the hidden camera while Rebecca mocks how suspicious he is. He electrocutes himself and goes down. She points out that he is aroused. He insists the relationship is purely transactional, that he feels no attachment, and that he could have her killed if he wanted to. She is thrown at first. Then she initiates sex at knifepoint and says he will impregnate her, binding them for life. He starts wiring money on his laptop. She leaves again. He catches her at the elevator and demands collateral against blackmail that might never stop. She refuses. She says he cannot take control back. He drags her into the room and demands the truth. She shows him secretly recorded footage of the two of them. Despondent, he ties her to a bedpost and orders her to delete it. Rebecca says she has already quit professional domination and left her fiancé, because she only feels self-actualised in their sessions. He demands she admit she is lying. He even uses their safeword, “sanctuary.” She insists they are no longer playing.
The father roleplay, and a contract rewritten
At the breaking point Hal threatens to kill Rebecca and then himself. She proposes one last roleplay: she will perform as his resurrected father. He follows her into the bathroom, reluctant. She coaxes him toward the line “I am nothing like you and I never will be.” He answers, “I am nothing like you and I don’t have to be.” They embrace and fall asleep. She wakes on the bathroom floor while he cleans the suite. They leave together. He is on his way to the ceremony where his mother will hand over control of the company. He proposes that Rebecca become CEO instead, so she can live as an independent woman in charge while he supplies emotional comfort, material support, and sex. When she asks how he will explain this to his mother, he says he will tell her they are in love. They kiss.
How it was made, and how it landed
In September 2021 it was announced that Qualley and Abbott had joined the cast. Principal photography was in New York City. The film premiered at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2022. Days later Super LTD, a Neon division, acquired distribution rights, and the film ultimately went out under Neon. In May 2023 Universal picked up international rights outside Italy, the CIS, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Australia, and New Zealand. It also screened at Miami Dade College’s 40th Miami Film Festival on 11 March 2023 and was nominated for the Knight Marimbas Award. The limited U.S. theatrical release was 19 May 2023, digital on 20 June, and physical media on 15 August. On Rotten Tomatoes, 88 percent of 91 reviews were positive, with an average of 7.5/10. The critics’ consensus praised the leads and said the film “confounds expectations with élan.” On Metacritic, 17 critics gave it 67/100, “generally favorable.” Almost the entire story is a hotel-room two-hander. Scripted humiliation, anxiety about who inherits the company, and romantic obsession keep swapping who has the upper hand. Hal is the author of the degradation he wants. The safeword is an emergency brake in real life, and it gets brushed aside once one of them says the game is already over. Blackmail, sex at knifepoint, the father roleplay, and the closing offer to hand her the CEO seat all push the same question: when does a session they agreed to actually end, and when does attachment rewrite the contract?
