Nominated for Best UK Film
Q&A with Christian Cooke
Content Warnings – Strong language & sexual content
Amy, a sexual surrogate, is employed to help a high-security psychiatric patient overcome his intimacy issues in order to make parole. Incarcerated for 18 years, Dan must confront his dark past if he is to have any chance of freedom. Amy is Daniel’s last chance.
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Selected as one of nine projects for the BFI 2022 London Film Festival Work-In-Progress Showcase, Christian Cooke’s Embers unravels the contentions and moral dichotomies around sexual surrogacy: a controversial therapeutic treatment where patients are taught or re-taught touch and sexual intimacy by a medical professional in a series of sessions.
Dan (Cooke), has been incarcerated for 18 years – he has not spoken a word for the entirety of his incarceration and is deemed a high-security psychiatric patient. In a last-bid attempt to assist Dan in making parole, the secret employment of Amy (Ruth Bradley) is authorised as part of a sexual surrogate treatment programme. Determined to both help Dan and to prove the legitimacy of her profession, Amy must establish an intimate connection with a man who has not left a penitentiary in two decades.
Stellar performances from Bradley and Cooke display an often non-verbal and somatic dialogue; exchanges are carried in the characters’ bodies, movements and touches, and the film invites a deft and confronting exploration of how pain is carried within our very physicalities. Further sharpened and illuminated by Isobel Waller-Bridge’s (Fleabag: composer) lilting, mournful score, Embers conducts an unapologetic exploration of sexual surrogacy that is as oftentimes uncomfortable and alerting as it is softly, gently beautiful.
Bryony Chellew
