In modern-day London, Natalie Portman and Jude Law walk in slow motion towards each other as Damien Rice's hauntingly lovely "The Blower's Daughter" plays in the background. She gets knocked by a passing car; he swoops down to save her. A cheap screenwriting "meeting cute" trick? Sure. Is it extraordinarily sexy? Oh God, yes.
"Closer" opens as any good love story should. Two separate couples meet and fall in love. But then the couples intertwine. From there, it just gets heartbreakingly ugly.
After playing in Spaulding Auditorium as the last show of the winter film series, "Closer" is finally opening at the Nugget Theater this Friday, more than three months after its original release.
Directed by Mike Nichols and adapted by Patrick Marber from his award-winning 1997 play, "Closer" revolves around its superb four main actors who torture each other with deception, cruelty and temptation. It has been called our generation's "Who's Afraid if Virginia Woolf?" -- which, coincidentally, was Nichols's first directing job back in 1966.
Marber's play was an instant success when it began its run at London's National Theater in 1997. A provocative, witty and cathartic work, it quickly drew the attention of several actors and producers, who approached Marber to buy the rights. But he wanted a filmmaker. In 2001, Mike Nichols expressed interest to Marber and acquired the rights to the script. Marber felt that the screen adaptation would need special care -- care that Nichols was willing to give.
"I'm well aware that the language of the play is not really how people speak. It's heightened and -- dare I say it -- poetic in places," said Marber in an interview with the BBC.
Although critics have been split in their reception of the film, most are unaware that Marber actually dulled-down the sharply abusive, sexually frank dialogue from the stage production.
"It provokes a very personal response people either love it or hate it, and I think a lot of that depends on how your love life is going at the time," said Marber.
Marber had good reason to trust Nichols with his delicate work of art. As a director, Nichols had successfully converted the similarly edgy Edward Albee play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" into a classic film. More recently, he turned the widely acclaimed play "Wit" into an HBO film and Tony Kushner's epic drama "Angels in America" into a widely praised HBO miniseries.
The 73-year-old director of "The Graduate" is widely respected and lauded in Hollywood, so getting a top-notch cast came easily. Although Cate Blanchett had to drop out early in filming due to her pregnancy, Julia Roberts quickly filled her shoes.
Central to the film's emotional punch are the performances of Clive Owen and Natalie Portman. Both took home supporting actor statuettes at the Golden Globe Awards and both enjoyed respective Academy Award nominations. The applause is well deserved, as they delivered heartbreaking, powerful, raw performances.
As young but jaded Alice, Natalie Portman is completely believable in her role as a lovelorn stripper. In love with a man who seems incapable of genuinely loving her back, Alice seems to burst with agony and heartache while trying to maintain a proud exterior. At the same time, she effortlessly injects natural beauty into every scene. This is Portman's first time taking on an adult role and she makes her transition flawlessly as a particularly emotional and pain-ridden character.
As the focus of Alice's love, Dan is a stringy obituary-writer who irritatingly vacillates over decisions and between emotions. Played with grunginess by Jude Law, it is difficult to empathize with Dan, as he is the least likable of the characters.
While Alice is devoted to Dan, he wavers between her and Anna, played with surprising complexity by Julia Roberts. In one of her best, most guttural performances to date, Roberts delivers hatefully dirty lines with appropriate petulance and agonizing rawness that clearly exhibits her character's internal confusion. While sometimes annoyingly perfect in her Look-at-me-I'm-Julia-Roberts radiance, she does let go and looks realistically degenerated and exhausted in one pivotal scene.
However, as Anna's adoring lover Larry, Clive Owen steals the show in all of his tempestuous rage when things begin to fall apart. Disarmingly masculine, Owen embodies Larry with hints of awkwardness and gullibility that he tries to mask with sexual prowess. But when Anna flails in her fidelity, Owen's insecurities go haywire with raw rage that is simultaneously horrifying and heart wrenching. His eyes burn with the immense hurt, hate and betrayal that the average "good doctor" character is not meant to feel. And under Nichols' direction, hell hath no fury like Owen scorned.
Although repeatedly viewing "Closer" may be considered masochistic behavior, the film is beautiful in its overall emotional delicacy and raw brutality. It is worthy of seeing at least once, if not only for the phenomenal performances and overall cathartic experience.
