Four people and the tangled web they weave

Rating: 7/10 (14 December 2009)

In a single moment the lives of four strangers who have no connection to one another will be changed forever. A man and a woman meet in unusual circumstances and their lives will never be the same. What's more a woman whom neither of them will meet until a year later and a man who won't enter the picture until a further year later also will have their fates decided in this single moment. One day you're minding your own business and your life's path is determined because a young American woman you don't even know looks the wrong way when crossing a London street and is hit by a taxi. Funny how life works sometimes.
Alice, a 20-year old stripper who has just arrived in London, is the young woman who has the unfortunate meeting with the taxicab. She's not seriously hurt. Flesh wound really. But this moment changes everything. As she lies in the street she is attended to by Dan, a man she had spotted across the street and sort of flirted with in the moments before she stepped into the taxi's path. Inevitably they fall in love. But it will not necessarily be happily ever after. A year later we find that Dan, who writes newspaper obituaries, has written a novel based on Alice's life. As he is being photographed for publicity for the book he flirts with the American photographer, Anna, shares a kiss with her and ends up trying to talk her into having an affair. Alice discovers this and tells Anna, but not Dan, that she knows. And having asked Anna to take her portrait Alice has the moment that her heart breaks forever committed to film. Another year goes by, a year in which Dan stalks Anna without success. One night Dan enters a cybersex chat room where, while pretending to be Anna, he meets dermatologist Larry. Dan sets up a meeting between Larry and "Anna" but when Larry in fact does meet up with the real Anna a funny thing happens. Larry and Anna fall in love.
So now we've met our four players and the fun can begin. By fun I mean lying, cheating, backstabbing and generally reprehensible behavior. The four are all brought together when that photo Anna took of a tearful Alice is displayed in her photo exhibition. Dan and Alice are still a couple but Dan uses the occasion of the exhibition to pick up his pursuit of Anna and this time she relents. They carry on an affair for a year, even as Anna marries Larry in the meantime. Eventually Anna and Dan admit their indiscretions to their respective partners and leave those relationships for one another. But there are still plenty more twists and turns to come in this tale. Through it all the story is engaging. It's a smart, serious, adult drama which captivates throughout.
Much of the film's success can be attributed to the winning performances of the four lead performers who for all intents and purposes are really the only performers in the film. Julia Roberts, as Anna, probably has the least showy and thus least memorable of the four roles but her performance is certainly fine. The other three stars really shine. Natalie Portman as Alice, Jude Law as Dan and Clive Owen as Larry are all on top of their games. Each of the three have some truly powerful moments and they do so well in bringing some rather complex and conflicted characters to life. There's a lot of emotion in this story, sometimes bubbling under the surface and sometimes on full, raw display. And all four of the stars convey that emotion wonderfully. The characters they play may at times be hard for the viewer to embrace. These are people capable of some truly dastardly deeds so this certainly isn't an uplifting, feel-good kind of movie. It's a movie which if nothing else is honest, sometimes brutally so. You may not love these characters but you can't help but appreciate their story.