Closer
Not closer as in sales, but closer as in up close and personal. The ambiguous title of the eponymous Mike Nichols film that raked in two Golden Globe awards and two Academy Nominations. Both Natalie Portman and Clive Owen out-acted Julia Roberts and a particularly wooden Jude Law in this pretentious examination of 'contemporary relationships'. All chance meetings, instant attractions and casual betrayals. In Hollywood (as filmed in London) the only people who get into these huge relationship scrapes are 'arty photographers' 'obituary writing journalists' and 'Harley Street' dermatologists. Albeit with an overdose of testosterone. Are they the only people with the time? Portman's stripper role and false name, fair enough there aren't many strippers (or are there?) and not many people other than spies bother to maintain a false identity facade for years, but at least her role was believable - and she seemed to enjoy it too. The Jude Law character changed from shy sensitive to insensitive rash predator in pursuit of Roberts after hooking up with Portman, but we never find out why. Was he like this all along, a serial risk-taker, we never find out.
I'm not going to kick it to the extent that it's a bad film. But truly, Julia Roberts was totally miscast and like many who we have seen in film after film, you realise that they just aren't acting. WYSIWYG in RL. On the other hand NP and CO at times acted their socks off - hence the award nominations. In fact Clive Owen's done that before (Gosford Park) and this has finally seen him deservedly break into the A-List.
Films like this used to be made in France with unknown actors and subtitles. They probably still are, we just don't see them. In the meantime, for the Natalie Portman and Clive Owen performances it was worth seeing, but don't try and justify the plot and part of the ending too much.
On the upside there's (as usual nowadays) a great website. Click 'Enter The Site'
