More style than substance

Rating: 6/10 (16 June 2005)

possible mild spoilers ahead . . .
To be fair, 'Closer' is only rarely painful to watch, and though I found myself loathing most of the characters, they held my interest. The actors are engaging and attractive--especially Clive Owen as the oddly sympathetic Larry and Natalie Portman as Alice, the one character who doesn't seem to deserve the misery that befalls her--and though the settings seem a little excessively hip (big, airy London flats; upscale art gallery; high end, 'gentleman's club'-type strip joint, etc.), this is the movies, after all: even in non-escapist fare, we audiences prefer to watch people who are better looking than us, have cooler wardrobes and haircuts, and hang out in the land of the beautiful people, looking perfect, sipping champagne, smoking French cigarettes, and talking about serious stuff like art, literature, and, of course, sex.
The trouble with 'Closer' is false advertising. The title of the film and play itself suggest that the story will be about intimacy, but the screenplay keeps the audience at arm's length. We open with the chance meeting of Alice, a precocious American tramp meant to fit the 'La Boheme' archetype (she actually refers to herself as 'a waif'), and Dan, another big, black-and-white stock character--the struggling artist, confined to an unrewarding job as a writer of obituaries for a London newspaper. The melodramatic soundtrack does the work of informing us that these two have made an instant connection of epic, Romeo-and-Juliet, Tristan-and-Isolde proportions. We learn that Alice is fresh off the plane from NYC, where she has left both a problem boyfriend and her job as a stripper (yet another of an endless string of clichés that mar this film). Dan self-effacingly reveals his deep desire to be a successful novelist.
But before we get a chance to see these characters gain some depth below type, we are propelled one or two years into the future. Dan has sold his first novel--borrowing shamelessly from the presumably colorful life of Alice, who is now his girlfriend and flat-mate--and is being photographed for the novel's dust-jacket by Anna (Julia Roberts), to whom he finds himself inexplicably and overwhelmingly attracted (hey, Julia's hot, no doubt, but would she really knock Natalie Portman off the pedestal that easily?), particularly after he learns she's been up all night reading a galley copy of his book. We know so little about Dan that the sincerity of his attraction can't really be known; his first scene with Alice suggests that he's a shy, unassuming fellow, but with no indication of what has taken place between his meeting with Alice and his session with Anna, we have no reason to think he doesn't flirt with every attractive woman he meets. Alice arrives, instantly senses the attraction between Dan and Anna, provokes a bizarre but arresting confrontation with Anna . . .
And then once again we are flung into the unspecified future, where Larry (Clive Owen), a dermatologist who occupies himself with pornography and on-line sex chat, is cruelly lured by Dan (posing as a horny female swinger named 'Anna') into confronting the real Anna at her favorite place to relax, the London Aquarium. Lo and behold, the two hit it off (though one might suspect that Anna's initial interest in Larry might be fueled by a desire to get back at Dan for the sadistic joke).
We jump ahead haphazardly again and again, and it's safe to say without giving anything away that the sexual tension between Dan and Anna eventually comes to a head, after which bad things ensue. We then get the pleasure of watching our pretty, serious actors berate each other in vulgar, bitter exchanges. Jealousy and resentment abound; the wronged lovers Larry and Alice have their own encounter when Larry stumbles drunkenly into the club where Alice works after having left Dan (with Natalie Portman proving once again that the best ways for a pretty girl to get an Oscar nomination are either to wear a fake nose or play a stripper/whore). I assume we're meant to be filled with admiration for these 'courageous' performances, but even pretty, serious actors can't make us sympathize with these despicable characters. Julia Roberts gives the subtlest, most restrained performance, but we're never given any indication of what Anna sees in either Dan or Larry. Clive Owen's Larry is probably the most interesting character--a relatively sympathetic nice guy with a dark, misogynistic streak and a penchant for rough sex and porn. Dan seems sweet in the first scene, but then proceeds to behave monstrously, so that you find yourself hoping he'll get his well-earned comeuppance.
The structure of the film seems like the sort of device that might work well on stage, but on film, the audience is too distant from the characters' inner lives. Furthermore, Mike Nichols chooses here to take the melodramatic route, overusing Damien Rice's maudlin pop confectioneries to overstate the seriousness and importance of what's happening, so much so that we feel as if we're being pounded over the head with the film's deep seriousness, when in fact it's a rather simple story about shallow, selfish people betraying each other.
The real trouble here is that, despite the rare opportunity to see Natalie Portman bending over in a thong and Julia Roberts comparing the flavors of her two lovers' sperm samples, this film has nothing new to say about contemporary love relationships. Deception destroys trust, love is soured by jealousy, vindictiveness is ruinous . . . don't we already know this? Alice summarizes the situation appropriately early on in the film: when Dan lamely apologizes for having fallen in love with Anna with the classic 'I didn't mean for this to happen' line, Anna succinctly reminds him that 'there's always a moment' when one can choose to resist temptation--to suppress his/her own desires or perceived needs and avoid betraying trust. This one scene renders the rest of the film superfluous.