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Film review

Too close for comfort

Mike Nichols' Closer leaves the audience feeling unsympathetic and removed, unable to make sense of the pointless viciousness that appears to motivate its characters.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published December 2, 2004

[Photo: Sony Pictures]

In Closer, from left, Clive Owen, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts and Jude Law play characters who are close enough to wound each other, though the audience remains too far removed to care.

Mike Nichols' new film, Closer, is populated with cruel, pathetic characters doing nothing except deceitful things, a theme that becomes a problem because the film stars very appealing actors.

There's a good chance that viewers will be turned off by Julia Roberts playing against her usual sunny persona, or Jude Law stripping Alfie of any cheerfulness in seduction, or Natalie Portman portraying a cold-hearted exotic dancer. Clive Owen is another matter; his screen image is rough enough to handle such down and dirty material. But that doesn't make the experience any more pleasant. Closer is so relentlessly, pointlessly downbeat that it casts a pall on the holiday movie season.

Nichols has memorably addressed the cruel nature of sex and obsession in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Graduate (to a point) and especially Carnal Knowledge, to which Closer's dark spirit is closest. But those films sprang from an era in which fidelity and social inhibitions were crumbling, when the battle of the sexes was just heating up. Closer has the verbal sting of those works but little of their bite. It's an exercise in debasement without any moral.

Patrick Marber's 1997 play retains its stagy feel throughout, with leaps in time marking the beginning of acts and action dependent upon dialogue that, for all its earthiness, doesn't sound genuine. Some lines are zingers to remember, yet most are merely emotional sucker punches. Some viewers may hail the film as being "honest" because so many wounds are left gaping. But without any glimmer of sympathy for any of its main characters, the movie simply repulses as it unfolds.

Closer begins with an accidental meeting in London between Dan (Law), a newspaper obituary writer, and Alice (Portman), an American stripper who left New York when a customer got too close. They banter flirtatiously and move in together. A year later, Dan has written a novel based on Alice's checkered life, and Anna (Roberts) is a photographer hired to shoot his book-jacket photo. Dan propositions Anna, and intuitively Alice knows.

Anna rejects Dan, who retaliates in the film's most awkward sequence by posing as a woman in an Internet chat room to arouse a stranger, a dermatologist named Larry (Owen). Dan claims his name is Anna and arranges a meeting at an aquarium. The real Anna happens to be there. Instead of her being disgusted by Larry's supposition that she's a slut, they eventually marry, one of several incredible turns in Marber's adapted screenplay.

A year later, Dan is still pursuing Anna. This time, she succumbs to his advances. Neither can resist telling their mates, leading to breakups and reconciliations that shape the plot. Each change in partners is marked by escalating venom, to the point that none of these characters has any right to be happy.

Perhaps it's the time leaps that prevent Nichols from establishing any pattern to the behavior. We're expected to take for granted that not a single person would move on, or change, or wise up to their current lover's irrationality. No truths about the human condition are unearthed; we wonder at the end credits why we bothered watching these animals devour each other.

Closer does boast four of the better performances you'll see this season. Roberts should be commended for tackling a different kind of character and making the most of Anna's profane speech and icy demeanor. Portman incites the closest thing to empathy found in Nichols' film, putting to rest her child actor image forever. Law effortlessly develops Dan's soft underbelly, and Owen relishes the chance to show Larry slicing it open.

A few scenes in Closer suggest that the talent is being wasted: Larry delivering the coup de grace to Dan's heart, Larry making a drunken pass at Alice during a private dance session, and Larry squeezing the truth from Anna about her affair. Do we detect a pattern here? Instead of rationing the fireworks among a quartet, allowing Owen to carry the movie instead of lifting it occasionally would have led to better drama. Closer always keeps its purpose - and the audience - somewhere off in the distance.

Grade: C

Director: Mike Nichols

Cast: Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen

Screenplay: Patrick Marber, based upon his stage play

Rating: R; harsh profanity, sexual situations, brief nudity

Running time: 102 min.

[Last modified December 1, 2004, 10:03:13]