Too close, maybe

Rating: 7/10 (27 February 2005)

This is a film that hasn't really left the theatre, from whence it came. The original author, Patrick Marber, a hot young British playwright of the 90s, produced an intense theatrical sexual shocker and his participation in the screenplay has ensured that the intensity, confronting dialogue and angry characters remain. There are still only four speaking parts and the twelve scenes (with flashbacks) of the original have been retained. Marber has however toned down the ending, with little effect on the overall impact of the piece. It is a powerful statement on the ability of apparently civilized and cultivated persons to screw up their personal relationships via sexual adventurism.
When we first see him Dan the obituary writer (Jude Law), who takes the dazed Alice (Natalie Portman) under his wing, seems like a thoroughly nice guy. A year later, when he shows up at Anna's photographic studio, for a book dustcover photo, he's almost a different person, vain, overconfident and promiscuous. He plays an elaborate practical joke via an internet sex chat room (the most entertaining sequence in the film) and becomes the means whereby Anna (Julia Roberts) meets Larry (Clive Owen), the dermatologist with attitude. The subsequent tangles between the four of them involve a great deal of deceit, manipulation and emotional bullying (though all four never appear in the same scene). Larry in particular, the alpha male, is good at getting his way, though Anne suffers greatly as a result.
I'm not going to complain about the acting. I was pretty impressed with Clive Owen, previously seen mainly in detective-type parts. He played the Dan role in the original National Theatre stage production of 1997, and has no trouble with the more robust part of Larry in the film. Natalie Portman is practically faultless as a contradiction in terms, a naïve stripper. Actually, she turns out not to be so naïve, note the name in her passport, revealed towards the end. Julia Roberts acquits herself well in a less difficult part. Jude Law as Dan has a strange personality change part way through as mentioned but manages to make him more sympathetic towards the end.
People have compared this film to "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf" and Carnal Knowledge" both directed by Mike Nichols more than 30 years ago. The dialogue is certainly witty at times and the themes of love, sex and betrayal are certainly similar, but the characters here are even harder to like than those of George and Martha in "Woolf" and the Nicolson/Garfinkel characters in "Carnal Knowledge". There really is a problem when the audience has the shock of non-recognition, that is it says "I could never do that. Even if I'd like to."