PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 12/2/04)

"This is We Don’t Live Here Anymore with money," a colleague commented, upon leaving a screening of this slick, attractive film about four slickly attractive people and the sexual entanglements and betrayals they rather pointlessly put one another through. I didn’t think that was quite a fair assessment, because unlike We Don’t Live Here, which wants to bludgeon you with its "painful" "truths," Closer, directed by Nichols from a script Patrick Marber adapted from his own play, is also interested in entertaining, which it certainly does up to a point.

Sniveling hack writer Dan (Law) lives with adoring, enigmatic waitress-stripper Alice (Portman), but comes on to statuesque photog Anna (Roberts) while she’s shooting his book jacket portrait. A racy, daring, and utterly implausible plot gambit sees Dan inadvertently leading gruff doctor Larry (Owen) to a liason with Anna, and so the backstabbings and errant schtupings begin, topped off with an "a-ha!" twist ending, which is something you admittedly don’t see much of in this genre.

While a lot of the piece is very, shall we say, writerly—when Portman meets Law, she says "Hello, stranger"; later there’s a scene at Anna’s big photo exhibition, which is titled, whaddya know, "Strangers" . . . which, hmm, suggests a pattern, or even a theme—but most of the dialogue is pretty fresh, and it’s delivered with great brio, particularly by Owen. Roberts, alas, is not at her best here, but she has almost nothing to work with, and hence delivers a characterization so brittle one wonders why a man would shake hands with her, let alone try to seduce her. On the other hand, her just being Roberts supplies answer enough to keep the movie afloat.

—Glenn Kenny

Double-sided, International
$15.99

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