Flawed but compelling character study

Rating: 7/10 (4 February 2006)

Based on the stage play by Patrick Marber, Mike Nichols' "Closer" is a generally uncompromising look at that great big messy thing we call love. The movie views romance as a kind of high stakes parlor game in which men and women jockey for positions of power, use sex and deception as weapons to annihilate their opponents or get what they want, and wind up settling for safety over passion when it's time to get on with their lives. "Closer" also acknowledges the sad truth that, when it comes to love, we tend to want what we do not have, then lose interest once the desired object is attained.
Marber has written a complex screenplay centered around four major characters. Dan is an unsuccessful novelist who meets and falls in love with Alice, a young American living in London. Julia Roberts plays a professional photographer named Anna, another American transplant, who has her first encounter with Dan when he comes to her studio to have some portraits taken of him. A mutual attraction develops between the two of them despite Dan's purported love for Alice. The fourth main character is a doctor named Larry who meets Anna and falls in love with her even though Anna's real obsession seems to be Dan.
For the next couple of years, the relationships between these four characters undergo tremendous transformations, forming and re-forming, grouping and re-grouping, until even the individuals involved no longer know what they feel or who they want. All they know is that happiness always seems to be vaguely out of reach because the person each of them is involved with has either moved on to someone else or has lost interest in the relationship. The film often condenses time by leapfrogging over months and years between major scenes without a great deal of transition, forcing us to pay rapt attention at all points throughout the movie.
Since "Closer" is derived from a stage play, it's not always successful at hiding its theatrical roots. Sometimes that's a good thing as when the movie achieves a sealed-off, claustrophobic atmosphere that enhances the personal drama. Like a lot of stage writing, the dialogue is often literate, sharp and insightful, but, towards the end, it occasionally feels a bit too clever and artificial for its own good. Once the characters start articulating the "great truths" of their lives, they lose authenticity and become mouthpieces for the author. And after about an hour of watching them sabotage their own happiness and listening to them whine about their lives, your patience and empathy may begin to run a bit thin, undercutting some of the positive feelings you've developed towards the movie in the first half.
In terms of the acting, three of the four leads - Law, Roberts and Natalie Portman - all deliver strong, subtle performances, but Clive Owen hits too many false notes, especially when he is called upon to emote to any great extent. Still, the others draw us into their insulated little world of drama and woe just enough to make us interested in what's taking place in their lives and damn thankful we aren't a part of it.
If for nothing else, "Closer" deserves plaudits for a clever, dead-on, hilarious and brilliantly sustained comic sequence involving internet cyber sex. That alone is worth the price of a rental.