Nobody, not even the viewer, is going to get Closer.

Rating: Null/10 (6 December 2004)

'Closer' is ultimately about 4 peoples' bony lust for sex and possession of a member of the opposite sex to the point where they will destroy the relationship they are already in, not to mention their own self-respect and better judgment, and they will do this all without ever really ever achieving intimacy with anyone. Thus, you could say the play and now film is really a take on the neurotic self, the self that really only considers its own heart and its own needs.
However, the very flaw of the characters is the flaw of the film. Whereas the characters can't ever achieve real intimacy, the viewers can't ever achieve true understanding of what is going on inside these people. And since all you have is people, beautiful people in beautiful places, there's not much to this film at all.
This can be blamed mostly on the fact that this film runs like a highlight reel of bad relationships over a 4 year period. You see conclusions, major fights or interactions and meetings and break-ups. You never really get to see the thought process of the character and why they ultimately make the decisions they make (whether it is boredom or lust, whether it is spite or genuine need). Instead, you are forced to gleam these ideas from the portrayals.
In other words, it's an actors own wet dream. None more so than Natalie Portman. In what she will look back on and thank for years to come as it stands out in that rather large gap of quality between 'The Professional' and everything before this. I have never been much of a fan, but her performance is brilliant. I doubt any one could have done better.
In the same hand, Clive Owen gives a balls-to-the-wall performance. If anything, he should get an Oscar nod for being the only actor to have the courage to play this with such unabashed virility and verisimilitude. He does not shy away from asking explicit sexual details about his wifes' affair or tearing out the heart of the man she had the affair with, he marks his territory and then fights for it with spit and iron. Yet, the true joy in his performance is that there is absolutely no sarcasm in it  unlike T.J. Mackey (another great alpha male character), there is nothing that is performed about Larry and that is indeed a beautiful thing to watch.
Jude Law plays the straight-man, the pseudo romantic/wimbly writer who is ultimately the play thing in their games. He is mindful of this and continues on in his streak of good performances in good films. I would have preferred the raw emotion he expressed in 'Cold Mountain' to be channeled in this as well but at no time did I want for a different actor to come in.
Julia Roberts, on the other hand, could have greatly benefited (so could the film) from stepping out of this film. I can see why she wanted to do this. I just can't see why anyone would let her. I can see what she should have been through Larry's exposition, but never once did I see it from the performance. It is especially difficult because the scene in which Larry and Alice confront each other in the strip club is such a masterful scene, it makes Larry and Anna's own confrontation almost laughable.
All in all, I doubt the words or the situations will shock you very much although they are far from the norm. You can open your email box these days and see worse in the Spam folder. However, that is the problem  it is not the situations which are truly of interest, it is the reasons people get themselves into these situations and that process is left out entirely. Thus, the movie does not speak to really anything other than exhibiting screwed up people doing screwed up things. I think with a little more digging and some slowing down to show a key week or a thought process, the audience would have most likely seen a little of themselves in the characters even if they judged them as 'screwed up.'
As a result, even the audience cannot get closer to the characters and that doesn't come off as anything more than frustrating and all the effort of great performances, pushing the Sex and the City train of sex chat, right down to Jude Law's attempt to look like a working class Joe are lost completely on what might of a been a truly brilliant film. C+/B-.