by Eliza GREEN

There are four char­ac­ters in Clos­er, the most in­trigu­ing film to make its way to main­stream cin­e­ma screens in years. None of the char­ac­ters is no­tably lik­able or rep­re­hen­si­ble. Ju­lia Roberts, Jude Law, Na­tal­ie Port­man, and Clive Owen play four mid­dle-class hu­mans, their on­ly dif­fer­ences from you, your broth­ers, and your neigh­bors be­ing per­fect light­ing, bet­ter art di­rec­tion, and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in­ter­est­ing pro­fes­sions. Chance meet­ings oc­cur, af­fec­tions flip, and this well-plot­ted love quadri­lat­er­al morphs and flails over the course of four years that are deft­ly com­pressed in­to just un­der two hours of film. The act­ing is strong and the di­a­log su­perb. Di­rec­tor Mike Nicholls puts on dis­play the af­fec­tions, tor­ments, and ac­tions of four typ­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of species Ho­mo sapi­ens sapi­ens. We’re a species prone to de­ceit, self-loathing, and fool­ish­ness, and like a mir­ror Patrick Mar­ber’s script shows us our dirty re­flec­tion. Few movies show hu­mans as we are. I sus­pect, as the film sug­gests, that this is be­cause re­al­i­ty is an im­age we don’t of­ten care to acknowledge.

Filed under Films on January 9th, 2005

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