An anti-romance

Rating: 8/10 (1 October 2015)

As this film opens one could be forgiven for thinking it was going to be a romantic comedy; we see a man, Dan, walking down a London street as he notices Alice, a beautiful girl with hair dyed as red as the London buses, approaching him; she turns to cross the street and is hit by a taxi. After accompanying her to the hospital they chat a bit and he reveals that he already has a girlfriend. In the next scene Dan is being photographed by another attractive woman, Anna, he kisses her than tells her that he is currently with a girl called Alice. The forth protagonist, Larry, is introduced when Dan goes to on online sex chat pretending to be a women called Anna; Dan suggests they meet at the Aquarium somewhere he knows Anna the photographer often goes. This leads to an awkward meeting between Larry and Anna which ultimately leads to a relationship then things start going wrong. There is infidelity, there is jealousy and there is hypocrisy as the relationships fracture and reform.
Anybody hoping for a happy romantic comedy is going to be in for quite a disappointment; once the introductions are over there is little more in the way of romance it is all bitterness and jealousy as the characters find out what their other halves have been up to. Dan and Larry are the most hypocritical; sleeping with other women then acting as if they have been wronged when their partners tell them they have been with somebody else. The cast does a fine job making their characters believable which makes them quite unlikable. While there is a lot of talk about sex this is deliberately crude and unsexy in a way that makes for uncomfortably viewing at times. Even the scene between Clive Owen's Larry and an almost naked Alice, played by Natalie Portman, is cold rather than erotic; in fact it is far more chaste scenes such as the first view of Alice that are sexier. For the most part the film felt uncomfortably believable but there were one or two moments that didn't seem real; most notably the online chat between Dan and Larry; the text-speak looked like something only a child would use; not a doctor and a writer! Overall though I'd say this was a sharply written and well-acted film but I'm not sure that I can say I really enjoyed it as the characters aren't that likable. I'd still say it is worth watching but only if you are an older viewer; the content is both unsuitable for younger viewers and unlikely to appeal to them.