Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott are Rebecca and Hal, a dominatrix and a rich pervert, a masochist who is about to take over the family corporation after the death of his father. As the film begins, the two meet for an apparently regular session. Rebecca walks into Hal’s hotel room wearing a blonde wig and a business suit and it seems like they are having some business negotiations and discussions. But we soon realize that this is their standard patter and Rebecca is acting according to the script that Hal has prepared for her, and before we can even get our bearings, Hal is naked on the bathroom floor cleaning the toilet bowl with a toothbrush while Rebecca humiliates him.
And then it becomes clear to us that Hal is one of those submissive types, a masochist who enjoys being humiliated. This is also his big secret, which he would clearly like to keep hidden, and the situation will completely get out of control when he decides to stop the sessions with Rebecca. Because now he becomes the CEO of a large corporation and hopes that he will get rid of his dominoes easily, but it won’t quite work out that way because if anyone knows all his secrets, it’s her and if anyone really knows him, it’s her. Rebecca is sure that a guy like Hal is unfit for the cruel world of corporate business, so she prepares him a surprising counter-offer.
Although “Sanctuary” is a film whose action takes place in one interior, i.e. in a hotel room, and a film in which we have only two characters, the young American filmmaker Zachary Wigon managed to make even an interesting and dynamic film, full of twists and turns, based on Micah Bloomberg’s script. Of course, a good part of the credit for that belongs to the acting tandem, and both Abbott and Qualey are in good shape, and only at the end do we really understand the complexity of their characters. Although at first “Sanctuary” may sound like some kind of perversion, it is more of an atypical romantic comedy about people whose motivations and urges we will understand at the very end, when a lot of things actually fall into place.