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CLOSER Send This Review to a Friend
Director Mike Nichols is in top form with his adaptation of Patrick Marber’s searing play about relationships. Marber also wrote the screenplay for “Closer,” in which couples tear at each other, cheat and try to find themselves in the process. On screen the angst seems even more immediate. But there is a similar problem to that of the play. One can weary of the characters’ destructive behavior and not care all that much about what happens to them. Yet the acting by Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Natalie Portman is never less than superb.
Given the leeway in films today, Nichols and Marber preserve the candid language of the original with extremely explicit dialogue describing sex, some of it used playfully, some hurled in vindictive accusations. Heaven help those who go crazy over merely a quickly exposed breast on television. “Closer” is raw in emotion and raw in expression. The psychological wounds are also raw.
Talk about meeting cute. Jude Law as Dan, who writes obituaries but really wants to be a novelist, is mischievously working the internet in a chat with an unknown correspondent, Larry, a dermatologist, played by Clive Owen. Dan pretends to be a woman, and Larry is turned on by all of the explicit things Dan promises they can do together. The back and forth is raunchy, and a meeting is finally arranged. Dan has played a practical joke on Anna (Julia Roberts), as well as on Larry. When Larry shows up at the assigned place and meets Anna, a photographer, he thinks she has written all Dan has promised in the messaging. But she winds up being amused and a romance begins.
Although Anna marries Larry, she has an affair with Dan. There’s another in the equation, Alice (Natalie Portman), who tries to be a free spirit but is an emotionally wounded, very vulnerable one. Portman’s character is the one worth caring most about, and she gives a powerfully poignant performance. One feels for her because she has the ability to be sincere and faithful. She is particularly memorable for her tough-as-nails acting masking vulnerability in a backroom scene at a strip joint where she dances sexily, with Larry shelling out money to see her reveal more and more of herself.
Owen comes off next best. He has a terrific screen presence. He’s handsome and impressive, making Larry strong and appealing. Law does a fine job portraying Dan, but the character isn’t very interesting in comparison with Larry.
Roberts does one of her best acting jobs as Anna, but here again, the character is not all that exciting, and one is prone to care much more for Alice’s fate than for hers.
Nichols keeps the drama crackling and he has also made an extremely smart looking film, which is set in London. The screenplay jumps from point to point without detail in between, thus making the drama move swiftly from crisis to crisis. The story may strike a chord with viewers who have gone through their own relationship traumas. It may also scare the daylights out of others pondering commitment. A Columbia Pictures release.
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