I knew what to expect and I loved this film

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2004)

In my area, this film was described as adult in content--not because it contained material that would be unsuitable for younger viewers, but because it would be wholly uninteresting to them. I knew it would be full of angst and neurosis when I went to the theatre, and perhaps for that reason I was able to enjoy it for what it was.
I feel this film can be summarized as an exploration of the difference between emotional and factual truth. Natalie Portman's character is, where actual facts are concerned, the biggest liar. Yet she announces herself as such. As she says in a scene with Clive Owen, "Lying is the most fun a girl can have with her clothes on, but it's better if they're off." She is also the most emotionally truthful and therefore vulnerable, which makes her courageous by comparison to the others. She is the first to learn the truth about her lover's wandering heart, she makes her grief over this known to the other woman, and she continues to love her man anyway. Portman's character is like the Cassandra of this story: she foretells what her lover is thinking and what he will do, even as he denies it, and when she tells the truth to Owen's character, she is not believed. It is as if she sees all the true natures of the other characters most clearly, and yet she throws her heart into a doomed relationship anyway.
Owen plays a self-proclaimed "caveman" who is, of all the characters, the most comfortable with his own nature. He is not afraid to win his woman or to exact revenge through brute emotional force. He is the type of manipulator who tells those he manipulates just what he is doing.
Julia Roberts's and Jude Law's characters are, in contrast, completely insecure with themselves, and they are the ones who engage in the most hurtful (and long-term) deception of their lovers.
It is significant that Roberts's and Law's characters each initiate their betrayals on the eve of what could be successful moments in their careers--Law propositions Roberts while she takes his photo for his first novel, after a career spent writing obituaries, and Roberts only succumbs to his advances after a gallery show of her work.
Also significant is that Law's book is based on Portman's life, and one of Roberts's commercially successful photos is of Portman as well. For her part, Portman deems both works a lie.
Ah, the irony. The biggest liar of all can spot all the lies and yet do nothing to extract herself from the painful betrayals to come; the man who was afraid of failure already had found acceptance when he was a nobody; the woman afraid of success attains it in her profession only to sabotage it in her personal life again and again; and the man who is the most honest about his nature becomes the most successful manipulator of all.
I found the movie to be very engaging, and likely to spark a lot of lively discussion afterward. It is not, however, a good film to see on a first date or just after making up with one's lover.