Look "Closer"

“You’ve ruined my life.”

So says one of the characters early on in Mike Nichol’s new ensemble drama Closer, and they’re description of the implications of the sexual tension existing between them couldn’t be more apt. In fact, this is Nichol’s most abrasive and devastating look at sex and gender since his own hallmarks of the genre Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and Carnal Knowledge. It’s also the best and most daring theatrical film – HBO’s Angels in America and Wit notwithstanding - he’s made in almost two decades. And with little things like Working Girl, Silkwood, Biloxi Blues, Postcards from the Edge and Primary Colors out there, that’s saying something.

Based on the award-winning play by Patrick Marber, whom did the adaptation himself, Closer is a bedroom drama spanning four years in the lives of a disparate quartet of individuals linked together by sex, passion, lust and love. Full of chance meetings, instant attraction and casual betrayals, the movie is setup like a group of individual snapshots, brief glimpses inside the lives of people trying to find that one love connection grounding them for the rest of their lives.

It begins with Dan’s (Jude Law, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), an obituary writer with aspirations to be novelist, chance meeting with beguiling American Alice (Natalie Portman, Garden State, signaling her arrival as an adult actress to watch) at a roadside traffic accident. Stiff Brit Dan is immediately smitten, and it’s clear from the casual London stroll this is one girl he doesn’t want to see get away.

Fast-forward six months. Dan is having his first novel published and is sent to photographer Anna (Julia Roberts, Erin Brokovich) for some headshots. She’s read his book and is thoroughly impressed, but worried that the young girl it’s based on won’t see his stealing of her life pleasantly. But there is more to this connection, more between the two of them than just a casual dialogue about Dan’s literature. It’s almost instantaneous, this attraction, and the smoldering passion of it scares Anna just enough she can’t let herself succumb, especially as the author is still in the thick of a relationship with his muse Alice.

Fast-forward again. Anna is dating sexy and somewhat kinky dermatologist Larry (Clive Owen, Croupier) and they’re together at a showing of the photographer’s work. They have Dan to thank for their romance, the now-failed author inadvertently responsible for setting the two up on what turned into an unplanned blind date. But when he arrives with Alice at the gala with heat still generating between writer and photographer, that smoldering combustion is fast becoming apparent to the increasingly worried significant others.

Fast-forward. This time a year. Larry and Anna are now married while Alice and Dan continuing to live together. Neither of these situations lasts, as affairs are admitted and relationships shatter. While the tears fall on all sides, some hearts break in two while others harden over like concrete, and none of the foursome can seem to shed themselves of the baggage carried over from old love affairs to new. How will things change now? Will Dan and Anna find away to make it work even though their passion has sprung forth from lust and betrayal? What about Alice? Can she survive in London on her own?

Fast-forward. Larry discovers Alice working as a stripper.

Fast-forward. Anna and Dan find their romance change forever over drinks at the opera.

Fast-forward.

Fast-forward.

Fast-forward.

The irony of Closer is that, as an audience, we are no closer to these four characters by the end of the melodrama as we were at the start. Each has seen their lives shatter and change and fill up with love, regret and loss, but I’m not exactly sure we feel any more affinity for them by the time the credits role. Alice, maybe, but she’s really it, and that has more to do with Portmans’s performance more than anything else.

But knowing them isn’t the point, relating is, and in many ways the romantic entanglements of Closer are every bit as real as the ones we as people find ourselves dealing with day in and day out. What was the road our parents took to find (hopefully) amaranthine love? What were the twists and turns in our own long-lasting relationships ultimately making them what they were? How much pain must go in tandem with happiness for love to be an everlasting success?

Not easy questions, and ones without any real answers, and neither Nichols nor Marber admit to knowing. But that’s part of the movie’s strength, the duo realizes the open-ended nature of love is part of what makes falling into it so mystifyingly special. Sure, the movie never escapes its theatrical roots. The dialogue is spat out in a rat-a-tat rhythm no normal person talks in, and the endless jumps in time and space become more than a bit disconcerting, but that’s not really too much of a bother. Nichols has cast his film beautifully, garnering a strong ensemble willing to push the audience and their own emotions to places both startling and unanticipated.

The Americans are the real surprise. Roberts takes herself into terrain heretofore I hadn’t imagined her capable, shedding her movie star persona and crafting a emotionally cloistered every-woman I imagine most thirty-somethings out there can more than relate to. Even better is Portman. Hers is the most complex, chameleon-like role in the picture, the catalyst that evolves and changes throughout and puts all the pieces on the chessboard in motion. Yet, there is something delicately hopeful about her, something profound and moving beyond her young years and this is the type of soul baring performance people talk about years later.

Both of the men are just fine, the statuesque Owen more than making up for appearing in the abysmal King Arthur earlier this year. His character takes the darkest path, yet he’s also the one I felt the most compassion towards. A misogynist and creep on the one had, Larry is also the only completely honest person in the film, open about who and what he is as well as the love and devotion he feels towards Anna. He’s willing to do anything for her, even subjecting his own cavalier ways to the microscope, making her ultimate betrayal of him all the more devastating.

As for Law, he’s quite good even if he is the weakest link. Not that he’s bad, just the opposite, but just that his performance here isn’t really all that different from so many others in the actor’s recent history. Essentially, his Dan is just a more sheltered version of the character he played in Alfie, nothing more than a little lost boy afraid to stand up and take life by both hands. He was better in that earlier picture, however, and a scene between him and Portman near the end rang far too hollow for my tastes mainly do to the sense of déjà vu. Maybe it’s just overexposure, this is the actor’s fifth (out of six!) movie to hit screens this fall, and I for one am finding myself getting slightly tired of him.

Still, Closer is a darkly satisfying motion picture willing to take on sexual subjects most movies wouldn’t dare. Nichols knows the backrooms and hallways of this film like the back of his hand, moving it along with self-assuredness of which only a pro is capable. Not for all tastes, and much like the works of Neil LaBute (The Shape of Things, In the Company of Men) it so closely resembles this is sure to provoke just as much outrage as affection. But so what? At their best, multifaceted discussion is what movies are supposed to provoke. On closer inspection, that’s exactly what this one does.

Film Rating: êêê1/2  (out of 4)