There are many definitions of intimacy on film, but I have rarely found nudity or sex scenes to be one of them.
What the camera can do better is somehow observe thought and experience - the nuance of feeling.. This requires the actor to work with extremely subtle degrees of expression, and to track their own inner processes as closely as their outer ones. In RAGE, there was nowhere for the actors to hide. No elaborate sets, no cutaways, no shadowy corners.
The relentlessly probing camera - held, in the story, by the unseen and unheard ‘Michelangelo’ who is, we gradually understand, a young boy - leaves each character no escape. What starts as a favour, given to him, however, gradually becomes a need. The need to be seen, to be heard. The need for someone to look behind the mask and to face the astringent but releasing truths that can only emerge in the one-on-one arena we call intimacy.
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