A fended-off desire for intimacy

Rating: 8/10 (24 May 2011)

In this film, the overarching story is one of futile sexuality, a sexuality that is used in a counter-intuitively destructive manner. Consummation is procured not with the intention of creating life, but of harming another person. And, as much as animalistic allusions are referred to and this seemingly incessant drive to reach a state of primitive ecstasy is echoed time and again, whenever sexual acts are described, they are done so in a dehumanized, emotionless manner, as if to say that they can only exist as an abstraction. This is reinforced by the fact that the acts are never actually shown, only talked about. Julia Roberts portrays perhaps the most tragic character of all, as she becomes the "sad stranger" in an ever-changing partner merry-go-round, yet, as Larry put it, she does not want to be happy, and has to compromise in order to avoid being swallowed by uncertainty. As she kisses Dan at the beginning of the film, her camera goes off, and she immediately stops she makes sad strangers look beautiful in photographs, and when her picture is taken, she runs the risk of looking beautiful, a threat which proves too big. Equally living in a psychogenic vortex is Dan himself, who pines for his mother every night and tries to sublimate this by engaging in intercourse with unknown women, he cannot risk becoming dependent on someone who may ultimately leave him (as parents almost inexorably do). He desires Anna "because she doesn't need" him. When he's on the computer talking to Larry, he personifies his conflict well. He cannot have the desired object, thus he must become the object, and control her fate he pretends to have an orgasm as Anna, yet says it was not good, closing in the fantasy that he is the only man who can provide Anna with a pleasurable sexual experience, he controls her orgasmic thrill, as it was. The movie's title tantalizingly denotes how at so many different points in the film one character is longing for a holding, comforting "other", yet this other is never in the same place. Scene after scene we observe one person crying and begging for some sign of mirroring affection, but crying is reproached by the detached party, in a sick fourth-dimensional mockery of human relations, yet one that is very accurate in showing that when one succumbs to the desire of the other (showing vulnerability, devotion, commitment), desire is killed. They are all spheres in themselves who are too afraid to touch because they may fuse, so an intellectualized verbal experience of intimacy is all they can hope for.