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(More customer reviews)"Closer" is a handbook about how not to act in a relationship. It is about deception in all its various permutations: lying, cheating, pretending to love someone, pretending not to love someone.
"Closer" is about anything other then actually being close. In fact "Closer" is about staying as far away emotionally from people as you can: playing games with each other, taunting each other with frank descriptions of intimate encounters and instigating brutal arguments in which the need to hurt and cut as deeply as possible is paramount.
The four involved are: Alice (Natalie Portman), Dan (Jude Law), Anna (Julia Roberts) and Larry (Clive Owen)
Adapted from Patrick Marber's play of the same name, "Closer" several times retains the artificiality of a stage play. Movies are naturalistic, the Stage is artificial and at times the screenplay and Mike Nichols direction leads the actors down the wrong path artistically: for example Julia Roberts, the warmest of screen actresses actually comes off arch and stilted saying some of her lines.
But about midway through, things even out and Marber and Nichols get down to telling their story in movie terms. It's interesting to note that many scenes here remind me of Nichols's first film, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" in their eagerness to go for the throat.
One outstanding scene between Anna and Larry has them going at each other like wounded, feral animals. I can't think of another recent film scene that packs such an emotional wallop. One that makes you wince because, by this point you know the characters well, they use words to slice each other up like surgeons performing heart surgery.
Law and Roberts play difficult characters to like much less love, which is probably what appealed to both of these actors on paper. But Anna and Dan are both emotional wrecks stuck out in a sea of diffidence and indecision and everyone around them is equally coflicted and emotionally closed. But, beautiful failures though they made be, Anna and Dan are nonetheless at the epicenter of this foursome. At times, Law and Roberts are effective and at others not so much.
Clive Owen is the real revelation here as Larry: a Dermatologist addicted to Computer Chat Rooms, from more earthy, humble beginnings than Anna and Dan...but very proud of his accomplishments. Owen plays him rough but sincere and when he tells Anna that he doesn't lie...you believe him.
Natalie Portman comes off best I think as 24-year-old Alice, who meets Dan in a classic "cute meet" manner: she is hit by a car and he helps her to the hospital. Portman, who has played Anne Frank on the stage and has less movie time than any of the other principals, plays Alice as if it is the last role she will ever play: she's direct, she's touching, she's sexy.
There is definitely something chilling and icy about the world that Nichols and Marber create in "Closer." Tread lightly here, keep your feelings to yourself and don't get involved, you just might survive a visit intact.
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