Closer

Mike Nichols' film CLOSER is about four people whom you would never want to meet. There's Dan (Jude Law) who writes the obituaries of people who are still alive, Alice (Natalie Portman) who's a stripper, Anna (Julia Roberts) a professional photographer, and Larry (Clive Owen) a dermatologist. Dan has just written a book, and he's being photographed for the jacket by Anna. He starts to play with her though, teasing her, seducing her. They kiss, and the devious Dan brings his girlfriend Alice into the room, asking if Anna will photograph her. From this point, the lives of these characters are intermingled, and the dermatologist, Larry comes into the picture when he meets Anna at an aquarium. Everyone in the film wants to have sex with each other, and they use a million different key words of seduction to convince each other that they love them. The film spans years, and as we delve deeper into each character's shady lives, we see that they are all detestable people: crude, but smart. The last two adjectives could also describe this entire film, and at one point, the characters began to seem ridiculous and idealistic to portray a cultural degeneration. This is Nichols' miscalculation. For his character are all so well played that they should have been able to speak for themselves. CLOSER is still an entertaining film, but it is not as profound as it thinks it is. The entertainment value and the strong performances outweigh whatever delusions it has, and it ends up being a pretty good fantasy film, exhibiting the different sides of a kinky-sex that people would like to think of.

Closer: ★★★