Life goes easy on me...most of the time.

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2005)

"Closer" is the story of three self-loathing Londoners and the American waif that turns their lives upside down. Natalie Portman's "Alice" comes to London from New York with very little money and no where to go. She meets Jude Law's "Dan" on a busy street during his morning commute to work at a London Newspaper where he writes for the Obits page. He had the dream of becoming a writer, but he isn't any good at it, he has no voice and no ideas. Alice and Dan fall in love, she moves into his flat, and he writes a book based on her remarkable and highly sexualized 21 year old life. He gets published and he goes to a photographer to get his picture taken for the book jacket. Dan falls in love with Julia Robert's photog, but the recently divorced "Anna" rejects his advances out of a sense of patriotism, and because she "is not a thief". And we are introduced to the sex-addicted dermatologist "Larry" while he is chatting on an internet casual sex club website. He later meets Anna at the London Aquarium, and yes they fall in love as well. The couples swap pairings and then swap back, and the film focuses on the ugliest parts of relationships, the angry, nasty, hateful and bitter breakups. This isn't Mike Nichols' best work, but that's not really a negative because his resume includes some of the greatest films of all time. There are only four characters in the movie, and Nichols does a wonderful job of letting us really get close and get to know these people. Patrick Marber's dialogue is frank and honest and leaves very little to the imagination. The performances of the actors is what sets this film apart. Especially those of Owen and Portman. Whether Owen is being hurt or he is the one inflicting the emotional pain, he is incredibly in the moment and honest. I haven't seen a better acting performance in anything in the past 10 years. And this is Portman's first real adult role, before she has always played the child trying to make her way in a world of adults, but in this film her innocence is gone, and she possesses all unenviable traits of a beautiful woman that can rip your heart out with one look. The two scenes between Owen and Portman are two of the best in the film. The best is probably Owen's performance in the "breakup scene" with he and Julia Roberts. Throughout the life of the scene Owen transforms from pure heart-broken meekness to rage, without missing a beat. Owen should win every award for acting that exists for his performance. Next to the performances, the best thing about the movie is singer/song writer Damien Rice, whose song "The Blower's Daughter" bookends the film and transports the audience into a world that initially seems to be a fantasy, but ends up more like a nightmare. I give the "Closer" a 9/10, mostly because of the brilliant acting and the films brutal honesty.