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Closer (2004)
HOW TRULY EXHAUSTING INSINCERITY IS
Yet another movie about confused city folk who criss-cross each other in precarious relationships and botch them with a selfish pursuit of gratification, guilt, envy.
I suppose this could have been an interesting take on craven Modern Relationships had it not been done a hundred times before, with more polish. "Sex and the City" or "Sidewalks of New York" had the good sense to play out such emotional faux-pas with a streak of humor. "In The Company of Men" showed characters with cruelty but reflected the brutal nature of the corporate world they inhabited. "We Dont Live Here Anymore" laid out marital quandaries in painstaking detail.
Closer simply lacks such a trope. Its characters resemble stray leaves caught in the windstorm of an urban existence. We never see them happy, we seldom see them being genuinely romantic (beyond first overtures, where most of the film's endurability is located), or even in a state of peaceful equilibrium. When their libido ruins bonds we find it tough to root for them, all we see is dysfunction.
It's the acting that rises over the rubble of a poor script and makes this film watchable. Jude Law's character is slime personified, and he does well to embody it. Natalie Portman plays a stripper (who mysteriously has her tops on even in a stripping sequence) and for a 24-year old she packs in a lot of punch. Julia Roberts is somewhat bland in portraying a character whose motivations rarely make any sense.
But the real winner is Clive Owen, who finally shows some of the potential I've been suspecting for a while, especially after his imposing cameo in King Arthur. He plays the rough, voyeuristic doctor, the only person in the film capable of cutting to the heart of the blather around him. Grungy, no B.S. Easily his best work to date.
Recommended rental for sure, but such a star-studded lineup should really have amounted to a more compelling film.
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