Stranded In The Southland

Sunday, December 12, 2004

"Closer"

I checked out "Closer" last night with my SO, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a Mike Nichols film about two couples that sort of intertwine and interact in some fairly ugly ways. Jude Law plays Dan, a young obituary writer who falls in love at first sight (in the first few minutes of the movie) with Alice (Natalie Portman), a stripper newly arrived in London from New York.

Dan writes a book about Alice's life, and is photographed by Anna (Julia Roberts) for the back-cover. The two of them experience an immediate attraction, but Anna wants nothing to do with an attached man. Anna meets and falls in love with and marries Larry (Clive Owens); unfortunately, she also sees Dan on the side, leading to an ugly breakup of both established relationships.

As far as I could tell, Dan was a complete immature git, and the rest of the folks were just weird or wacky. My sweetie, M., disagreed and thought they were all awful, but I really thought that it was mostly Dan who was terrible. Alice was kind of nutty and a little scary (we see her going through Dan's briefcase when he leaves the room after they just meet), but generally seems to know what she wants and is loyal. Larry is a little creepy, but, again, seems to respect his relationships and definitly knows what he wants. Anna cheats on Larry with Dan, but is at least mature about it and takes responsibiility for it.

[Dang, I gotta think more about makes a review; this doesn't really say much. OTOH, I guess I'm just logging this stuff, anyway.]