Closer (idea)

The story is about how four people slowly drive each other's life mad. Dan (Jude Law) runs into Alice (Portman), and the two immediately get caught up in a rauncheous relationship. Then Dan falls for Anna (Roberts), who marries Larry (Owen). The rest of the film the four spend the time falling out and in love with each other, in a story that is relatively predictable.

The script is a transformation from the play of the same name. Both the original play and the screenplay were written by Patrick Marber. Interestingly enough, Clive Owen held the role of Dan in the original stageplay production. He does a good job playing Larry this time around - his bouts of sheer evil are enough to raise the neck-hairs even on the most seasoned moviegoers.

Closer features Natalie Portman in one of her first serious "adult" roles - a role performed brilliantly in the faces of the naysayers who claimed she would never make the transition from child actress to "real" actor. Jude Law gives a steadily decent and adequate, but in no way outstanding, preformance, while Julia Roberts is cast in a role that appears to call for a femme fatale - something Roberts simply never was. She is still a good actor, however, and her lack of beauty is a good and stark contrast against Portman, who is by far the most beautiful creature on screen in the duration of the film.

The movie utilises some rather unusual yet very effective tricks to suck the viewer into its story. The movie isn't as much asynchronic or unlinear as a series of short bursts of storytelling - we are invited to see a short clip of the two couple's lives, interspersed with jumpcuts designed and edited in such a way that the viewers don't realise time has passed until the dialogue points out that we have been fooled... again.

Closer is a refreshing movie in many ways - breaking down a few taboos, manipulating the viewer into mindsets and ideas only to point out that we are wrong, that there is more to the story, and that we will never quite understand the complexity of how love works - at least not in the case of Closer

Portman's role as a stripper - while it will undoubtedly draw many viewers to the movie - is nuanced and receives sufficiently little screen-time. It is sensual and tantalising, leaves the male (and the female, I daresay) viewers painfully jealous of Owen (who is the "victim" of the stripping scene), and is a sort of visual and narrative climax before the movie goes back to its psychological mindgames.

Surprising at times, frequently amusing, strangely unsettling, slightly provoking yet ultimately inspiring, Closer is a movie that simply cannot be missed by any adult who has ever been, or ever plans to be, in a serious relationship.