Professional ethics are the moral principles, values, behaviors, and rules that people are expected to follow when practicing a profession. If you are a bricklayer, for example, you are expected to use good cement, solid bricks, and not cut corners by skimping on materials. If you are a psychiatrist, you should never become friends with or romantically involved with your patient, and so on. Louisa Connolly-Burnham’s short film The Intimacy Coordinator explores this very subject.
However, the profession it chooses to focus on is somewhat different from the usual examples, and quite an interesting one at that. Kate, an intimacy coordinator, is also a sex addict. If you had never heard of the profession before watching this film, you might reasonably ask, “Why would being a sex addict have anything to do with professional ethics?” I asked myself the same question. But I later learned that an intimacy coordinator’s job is to choreograph sex and kissing scenes in films or television shows and ensure that the actors can perform them safely and with consent. This is precisely where Burnham’s moral dilemma comes into play.
The issue is not that Kate is a sex addict, but that her addiction directly affects the way she performs her job. Kate derives sexual pleasure from the actors she works with, makes them take off their clothes even when it is not required by the script, and even performs the scene herself so that she can touch the actors. In other words, she uses the professional position that is supposed to protect the actors and respect their boundaries to satisfy her own sexual desires. She attends support group meetings and even has sex with people she meets there…
Because this is a dark comedy, if we were to look at Kate’s situation from a crude, superficial, and distinctly masculine perspective, it would be easy to make the comparison to an alcoholic working in a brewery. But no, there is something morally much more troubling going on here. The issue is not simply addiction; it is abuse, a misuse of power, and sexual harassment. Burnham successfully transforms all of this into a dark comedy that matches the absurdity of the situation. After spending some time drifting through Kate’s life, the story ends with her becoming a murderer in an attempt to avoid facing the consequences of her actions. The transition from the professional boundary violations the film establishes to outright murder makes the story’s dark humor even more absurd.
The film is quite successful at making its point while also keeping what it has to say watchable and entertaining. It has a subtle sense of humor and a provocative quality that encourages you to think about the subjects it explores.
