CORPORATE LINE: Academy Award-winning director Mike Nichols follows the triumphant “Angels In America” with Closer. A bitingly funny and honest look at modern relationships, Closer is the story of four strangers (Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen) – their chance meetings, instant attractions and casual betrayals.
Set in contemporary London, Closer is funny and powerful, and reminiscent of such Nichols’ classics as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Carnal Knowledge.
THE GOOD: Clive Owens and Natalie Portman pull the rug out from under Julie and Jude. Owens turns in a fantastic performance that will make him a certain commodity in Hollywood. Fans of Natalie Portman will enjoy her taking a chance as a stripper.
THE BAD: You may like the sauciness of Julie Robert and Jude Law playing perverse rolls—it’s fleeting. Closer is merely dancing on the surface of what could have been deeper and perhaps enjoyable. Not that we wouldn’t have like a perverse look into a relationship triangle—we’d have liked it were it actually interesting.
It’s sad that such great actors had to push harder to make their characters more than shallow shells of humans. Part of the shallowness is the senses that swearing will add to the reality or make us sit up and take notice—it doesn’t. Nichols tries to use swearing to invoke a reaction—good dialogue goes along way in creating characters we want to invest in.
FRANKLY: The discussion between characters could have been deeper and certainly more interesting. There is something missing, something intangible that shows up in the great films of similar ilk. If it weren’t for Owen’s ability to overcome a weak character and make it worth watching this would have been an utter mess.
+ Charlie Craine
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