Closer (2004)

A Nasty Little Gem

It's about four Londoners (the men are homegrown; the women transplants from the States) who, over the course of four years, fall in and out of love with one another, in remarkably quick and often devastating fashion. If this sounds a tad shallow, it should be. Mike Nicholas's lucid adaptation of Patrick Marber's acclaimed play (Marber also wrote the lacerating script) doesn't pretend its selfish, chilly, deluded characters are doing anything more than feigning the moves of true love on their quest for narcissistic gratification. The film is composed of the beginnings (all coy words and sweet nothings) and the ends (where wit is filed into verbal darts to be hurled at the most vulnerable moments) of their relationships, love winnowed to a nub for a speed-dating world. Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and particularly Clive Owen check sentiment at the door and deliver diamond-sharp studies in ennui, rage, arrogance, and emptiness. I'm not spoiling anything when I say that none of the four achieve the intimacy of the title, but it's nasty, wounding fun watching them sabotage one another (and ultimately themselves) along the way.

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