Louisa Connolly-Burnham’s The Intimacy Coordinator achieves something very few short films do: it presents an original, intriguing dynamic and builds on it with focus and nuance, without sacrificing ambition, character, or style.
The Intimacy Coordinator is Louisa Connolly-Burnham’s third short film, following on from the success of The Call Centre (2025) and Sister Wives (2024). Having written, directed and starred in each, The Intimacy Coordinator continues her exploration of longing, sensuality, and female sexuality, managing to combine each into a genuinely original examination of sex addiction and our desire for closeness in a world that is always far away. Here, she plays Kate, an intimacy coordinator on a film set who gradually loses control of her desire for an actor named Max (Kieron Moore), with whom she orchestrates intimate scenes. Despite her attempts to get better by attending SAA meetings, her desires for him transform into something more all-consuming, leading her down a spiral of hookups and quiet madness that results in a violent and shocking finale.
The film’s central idea, that of the veil between an intimacy coordinator and the actors who are being intimate, is almost Ballardian in its approach and scope. Her job is just one layer between her and the closeness she so desperately yearns for; she is tied up in the job’s politics and ethics while unable to detach herself from its voyeuristic nature. Sex, skin, the closeness of another being. These things are there, in front of her. They are even under her control. Yet, she feels and experiences none of it. She is disembodied from the act she is directing.
It’s a strange and wholly modern situation that fantastically encapsulates modern sexuality, its incompatibility with society at large, and its attempts to sanitise it. Sexuality is a force that cannot be coordinated, and that cannot be made safe or ethical. Desire is unbound. Desire sits outside our rules and conceptions, and that’s what makes the film’s conflict so compelling. Kate is made to control what she cannot. She is not inherently wrong in her desires; she is not right in acting on them either, but she is trapped in a prism where her work self and her deeper self are at constant odds. As a person with an addiction, this discordance of self only amplifies the emptiness at the heart of her and the need for it to be filled. Sex becomes that for her; it is the act that makes her harmonious, if only briefly.
In the film’s most tender scene, Kate calls her mother, sensing things are off and that the SAA meetings are making her obsess more than they help. It’s clear that she wants to be consoled, to feel a real, deep closeness. Yet her mother neglects it all and shortly ends the call to answer the door. From this short, beautifully subtle scene, we understand all of Kate’s addiction and longing. The emptiness she feels is that left by her mother, perhaps her whole family. Burnham’s performance is rich and moving as she stares into nothing, shaped by her mother’s silence and her inability to understand her truly. It gives the film depth and definition, making Kate feel like a character from a full-length feature rather than a 20-minute short.
Visually, Laura Bellingham’s cinematography renders the film beautifully stark and clean, reinforcing Kate’s mental state. On the fictional film set, everything is flat and lit safely, as if for an advert. The rest of the film is more adventurously lit and dynamic, giving language to the two worlds Kate inhabits. The supporting cast is similarly strong, each holding their own and adding moments of humour that don’t ever conflict with the all-pervasive tension woven throughout. It’s refreshing for a short film to have such an exceptional cast, and it elevates the film beyond an exquisite short.
The Intimacy Coordinator achieves something very few short films do: it presents an original, intriguing dynamic and builds on it with focus and nuance, without sacrificing ambition, character, or style. While the ending can feel a little tacked on or cliché, it manages to stay true to the character in a way that feels satisfying, and crucially, in a way that makes one want to see more. It is a film that feels bold and new in its perspective, bursting with potential. There’s a feature film longing to grow from its short confinement, one I hope we may one day get to see.
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