Nichols and the Four Principals Overcome the Film's Hopeless Misogyny

Rating: 7/10 (31 March 2008)

It is unlikely I have seen a more misogynistic film since Neil LaBute's "In the Company of Men", but director Mike Nichols uses his uncanny ability to delve deep into the human condition to come up with a challenging, superbly acted and at times surprisingly empathetic film about four self-absorbed, unsympathetic people. I'm not sure what other director could have been better qualified to translate Patrick Marber's stinging, cynical play set in an urban chic London. As he has proved from his 1966 debut, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" through 1971's "Carnal Knowledge" to "Angels in America" last year, Nichols knows how to humanize the brutality and emotional pain that people can inflict on each other. This master's skill is what prevents this 2004 drama from shriveling up into a wearing exercise in manipulation and deceit.
Writing the screenplay from his own play, Marber provides dialogue that is alternately sharp, observant and harshly erotic. At times, his acerbic work reminds me of Frederic Raphael's superb 1960's screenplays for "Darling" and "Two for the Road". The story that brings the four characters into a sexual intersection of tête-à-têtes and one-upmanship does get rather convoluted. The film covers about four years in elapsed time but takes liberties with scene transitions, focusing on the beginnings and endings of relationships and consequently complicating the chronology and timing of events, sometimes unnecessarily. Suffice it to say that each character figures out his or her capacity for hurting someone else and then goes about feeling empowered, guilty or some combination of both. It is telling that there are hints and often threats of physical abuse in the dialogue, but nothing is executed until a final, defining slap, filmed in slow motion, of course.
The acting is uniformly strong, though I believe the "beautiful people" aspect of the casting does distance the actors from the audience, perhaps intentionally. I am not a huge fan of Julia Roberts, but she surprises as Anna, the photographer who becomes the focal point of a shark-infested triangle. Looking rather sallow and absurdly thin, Roberts doesn't come across as all that attractive here, but her sullen demeanor seems to free her from the contrivances Hollywood has offered her for the past fifteen years. It seems inevitable that she is now playing the older woman archetype now, and she accepts her fate with a seasoned truthfulness that propels the rest of the characters. That she gives the weakest performance among this quartet is a tribute to the high caliber of the talent involved. At first, the overexposed Jude Law plays Dan, the ethically challenged writer who fails as a novelist, as a hopeless romantic, but what he gradually uncovers is a tormented soul weakening under the burden of his deceptions. It's a brave performance especially since his character is the one most willing to hurt the others deeply for his own selfish motives.
Playing Larry, the equally manipulative and sexually insecure dermatologist, Clive Owen finally sinks his teeth into a role that makes the most of his swarthy on screen persona. His emotional nakedness and bull-in-a-china-shop approach to his problems make a brutishly affecting counterpoint to Law's rather effete character. And in what amounts to a revelation, Natalie Portman is alternately vulnerable and bruising as Alice, the stripper who falls hard for Dan and won't give Larry the intimacy he needs when he is rejected by Anna. Eschewing any trace of the child actor she was, Portman tantalizes with her flighty sexuality and then grounds her character deeply when she is subject to an excruciating break-up from Dan. Her character's evolution, however sketchily it is presented, is the only one that achieves a poignancy that nearly transcends the story's cynicism. I have to admit the unrelenting tone does induce a numbing effect that makes you wonder why you should care about the fate of any of the characters. But leave it to Nichols to make you want to know what happens to each of them. The only significant extra in the 2005 DVD is a music video of Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter", which is used effectively as a musical bridge for their comings and goings. Highly recommended though don't expect to feel life-affirmed afterward.