The conceit is Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutti

Rating: 10/10 (10 January 2005)

For people who are enthusiastic about CLOSER, may I recommend a listen to Mozart's opera Cosi Fan Tutti. It's no accident that this is the music in the background for much of the film, including a very clever use of the videotape (tv for opera latecomers) in the bar of the opera house thus employing a very economic means of filming attendance at a performance.
Anyway, Mozart's opera is all about fidelity and mistaken identities. The two male leads, "sent off" to war return in disguise and begin to court each other's girlfriends as a way to test their faithfulness. The opera is hilarious but consistently underscores the fickleness of love. The different "identites" in film are a direct play on this. Janes assumption of the name Alice and the two guys engaging in Cybersex are the most obvious examples. The palpable confusion each of them experience is much more difficult and gives the film its depth.
I found the conceit genuinely interlink and all of the performances superb.