The photographer, the writer, his wife & her lover

Rating: 7/10 (25 February 2005)

Patrick Marber's play at first hand seems to portray modern relations between four people. But there's much more to this: Larry is a doctor in order to express a pure physical (human) animal. He reacts to basic instincts and the fact that he 'wins' is perhaps a comment on our modern society. The most fascinating character is Alice (mind the name) because it's not so sure that she exists in the screen world for real or only in the imagination of the characters. The opening and ending sequences seem to support this notion. She's the subject of the writer's book, and the writer is in the movie as the one who documents relations (with her). Typical for a writer is his subjective view on events. A photographer has less ability to distort reality and therefore Alice is crying on the only picture of her that's shown at the exposition. Meanwhile, the doctor lives out his sexual fantasies on her, but the fact that he cannot touch her in vital segments of the movie is only proof of his inability to have human contact or indeed, come closer.
Although well structured as a play and movie I was surprised to find the writing details very uneven. Horrible, immature lines (for example, the first lines of the movie) and brilliant, mature lines are intertwined and as a result it brings the movie down as a whole.
As director Mike Nichols does a fine job, but some more experimenting would have seriously enhanced the value (see Dogville for example of a more experimental 'movie as a play'). Also the movie drags a little in continually toggling between the love the four characters show for each other.
For an actor, there's no better movie to act than in these ones, but it's also very dangerous as there's almost no hiding to cover any weaknesses. Especially Jude Law disappoints here with a terrible flat performance, Julia Roberts holds up reasonably, Clive Owen is interesting and his portrayal will certainly play very well with British audiences, and Natalie Portman shines again and is rapidly developing in one of the better actresses of our time.