Closer | Review

Nichols gift-wraps a message of hate.

Loaded with venomous dialogue, profanity and blindsided cheap shots – Mike Nichols’ carnivorous, deliciously dark dramedey is perhaps the most satisfying experiment in human behavioral sciences since Neil Labute gave us Your Friends & Neighbors and In the Company of Men.

Such as the terrible foursome in We Don’t Live Here Anymore this is about the deliberate, and debilitating game of cheating and being cheated on. Adapted from on Patrick Marber’s play, Closer finds a quartet of likeable actors and part-time fashion magazine cover faces in roles that don’t ask for much viewer empathy. America’s girl Julia Roberts ( Ocean’s Twelve ) plays the photographer removed from her subjects – and removed from her own sense of guilt, here the actress depends less on her golden smile and more on her speech strut. Jude Law’s ( I ♥ Huckabees ) character – a womanizing shallow and selfish obituary editor and failed writer aims his poisoned darts at the heart, but his victims eventually beat him and his soul into a corner. Clive Owen’s ( Gosford Park ) fabulously plays the victimized doctor who writes up a pretty good prescription for revenge. The actor offers the best performance of the four, while Nathalie Portman ( Garden State ) sheds her teenager look for a role that sees her play a stripper – while Nichol’s opted to drop out her birthday suit scenes – the actress offers plenty to discover in her talents. When paired off – each one of these actors roll off each other so well and the narrative construction of the film doesn’t sway from this energy. The particular strength of the film is how the sequences are pieced together, – years are separated by seconds, the relationships are covered by beginnings and endings without a constructed middle. The film does not waste much time setting up or exploring the depths of the relationships – spliced together so that tears are dropped, mercy is asked and plenty of mental bashing occurs.

This is definitely not your typical Julia Roberts date film – Nichols’ featured car-wrecked relationships where the weapon of choice in relationship warfare is betrayal – makes this a portrait of self-destruction that gains little viewer empathy from start to finish. Marber’s script features strong characters, but the real punch comes from the snappy adult dialogue that is rich in emotional tension and intellectual stimuli. While not much materializes in terms of plot points and while the film hardly orbits outside of this cesspool of discomfort, Nichol’s unravels a text that doesn’t beat around the bushes and will keep viewer craving for more. A film like Closer might take a lot of time to find its crowd – people who’ll love the text usually loath the all-American girl will most likely only discover the film after much publicity.

Rating 4 stars