A flawed musical beds - but what does it mean?

Rating: 5/10 (14 August 2005)

Closer is trying to say something profound, but who knows what. It's a case of style over substance - a "much ado about nothing".
An anti-feminist movie, with two thoroughly unlikeable men, one silly woman (Roberts), and an OK, but naive(?) fourth (Portman). The women are just chess-pieces being played by the men, and seem quite content reacting to their manipulated status. No empowerment, insight or intelligence. Maybe this is real life, where women just cannot help themselves, poor things.
Quite a tedious movie about a pointless subject, lots of talking about pointless subjects and debating about pointless subjects, meaningful looks, bed-hopping, lying, deceit. There is very little character sympathy developed - as each character is completely indulgent and fails to exercise restraint or discipline.
This mediocre picture is not helped by gratuitous attempts to give the characters some vague backgrounds: Roberts is a (mediocre) photographer, who seems to live by the rule that a crap picture is better if its enlarged, Portman is a stripper (now that's worth the rental fee!) and Owen is a doctor of some sort. Most contrived, Law is an obituary writer. Maybe he could write an obituary about his nearly dead career, having been in turkey after turkey recently.
On the plus side, it's good to see Julia Roberts in an understated "Adult" role, and she shows that she can excel in a good dramatic role. Portman isn't too bad, and Jude Law and Clive Owen just go through the motions. Well, the male characters did OK, given the weakness in their scripts.