Closer

How perverse that that song was playing in a strip club in this movie. With women stripping. Anyway, let’s take a look at some previews, you cunt.

THE WEDDING DATE—So, first we had the best friend’s wedding. Then the Wedding Planner. Sometime in the near future we have the Crashers. Now we have the Date. This stars Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney (I guess his wedding didn’t work out)…

Wait. Why am I even previewing this one? We all know it’s going to suck. Hell, even the people who want to see it know it’s going to be crap. Let’s move on.

EPISODE III—Speaking of which…Actually this one looks like it could be much better than the last two (can’t get much worse, as John Lennon would say), but I’m still skeptical. I still CAN’T FUCKIN’ WAIT, though. The preview mixes scenes from the original trilogy and the new movie including lots of Anakin looking like an asshole and THE DARTH VADER SUIT! But I guess we all knew that.

I had seen this online, but I hadn’t seen it yet on the big screen. Looks better than it ever could be.

Now, Buster, let’s get to Closer.

First off, let’s get this out of the way: NO, Natalie Portman is not naked. Not really. She comes very close, though. She wears a very tiny bra thing and a g-string and even at one point pulls it aside to show the world to Clive Owen. Unfortunately, his head is in the way of our view.

None of this stops the geek in us all from growing three times its size. She is one mahotmama and, even though Mike Nichols cut the full frontal scene out (bastard…we know you’ve got that footage on constant repeat at home), I’m still happy with that aspect of the movie.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the actual movie.

Alice (the Goddess Natalie) is a free spirit and she doesn’t mind lying to get what she wants and to make people happy. (“Everyone loves a big, fat lie.”) She’s running from a past relationship by fleeing to London from New York. She used to be a stripper, but is trying to make ends meet without that in London.

Dan (Jude Law) is a sad sack obituary writer and failed author who really doesn’t have much going for him. When he meets Alice, though, everything changes. The two fall in love quite literally at first sight. So much so that she gets hit by a taxi before they can actually meet. (Like another free spirited character of Natalie’s, she gets to know her future lover in a hospital/doctor’s waiting room.)

Anna (Julia Roberts) is a closed up photographer who puts more feeling into her photos than into her life. When Dan meets her (a year after meeting Alice) he falls for her instantly. She, however does not return his affection…right away. So he goes home to Alice (the subject of his new book), but can’t forget about Anna.

Larry (Clive Owen) is a harsh (and slightly perverted) dermatologist who enjoys hanging out in online chatrooms waiting for cybersex. He meets Anna through Dan (completely accidentally) and they fall for each other.

And things just go downhill from there. Each partner visits the other partner at various times and in various places and have various harsh words for everyone. Like a Neil LaBute play, the characters in this play-turned-film are pretty much horrible people. But, unlike most of LaBute’s characters, these folks are extremely human. We can all connect to each one in different ways. And, while I like LaBute’s work, I think playwright Patrick Marber is better at making those human connections. Like Mike Nichol’s earlier Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Closer examines adult relationships in very adult ways. It knows that people aren’t simple. We’re not good or bad. We’re both. And we hurt and are hurt very easily by such silly little things. (“You’re more like a cat who got the cream and can’t stop licking himself.”) This is not as good as the earlier film, but it’s still very good in its own way.

The performances are all very good. They each show the joys and pains of new love and the utter heartbreak of it being over. Clive is the standout here. His words hit like a fist. He has to make people hate him so that it doesn’t hurt so much that he hates them, so he finds their weak spots and twists the knife in it. He is at once the most hurtful and the most hurt character in the film.

The film is pretty stagy, but that happens when you film a play that consists of only four real speaking parts. And it’s fairly easy to tell that it was probably written for four British characters instead of two British men and two American women. Alice says things like, “Can I use your loo?” and “Do you still fancy me?” Not very 20-year-old-American girl of her.

In the end, the whole movie is about lies and the protection they give us. Sometimes the happiest people are the people who lie to themselves and their loved ones. But are they happy because of the lie? Or because they’re avoiding life?

If you’ve ever been hurt by someone, go see this movie. If you’ve ever hurt someone, go see this movie. If you love Natalie’s ass, DEFINITELY go see this movie.