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Closer Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: R (for sequences of graphic sexual dialogue, nudity/sexuality and language) Theater release: December 03, 2004 by Columbia Pictures Directed by: Mike Nichols Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes Cast: Julia Roberts (Anna), Jude Law (Dan), Natalie Portman (Alice), Clive Owen (Larry) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Closer, the new film from Mike Nichols (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate), has a lot in common with the "smoker's lung" billboard.

You know the one—there's a cigarette in the left frame, and a blackened, diseased lung on the right. It's a troubling image. You're driving along sipping coffee or tea, you see the picture, and you choke. Nobody wants to see such ugliness. But it works. Sometimes. Especially for young people. That nauseating image of rotten tissue is enough to make a few of them say, "Not in my chest cavity!" It exposes the glamour of cigarettes as a lie, a short-term, feel-good rush that leads to long-term heartache.

Closer works like that. But it's not about smoking—it's about unfaithfulness. And instead of showing us ruined lungs, it exposes ruined hearts. Instead of disintegrating organs, we see souls sickened from dishonesty, anger, hate, emotional violence, grief, loss, and loneliness.

Julia Roberts plays Anna, a professional photographer

How interesting that Closer arrives while Bill Condon's film Kinsey is still in theatres. Kinsey celebrates the "scientist" who told the 1960s to stop thinking about sex in a restrictive moral framework, and to enjoy it in any way we please. After all, we're animals, and sex is "animal behavior." Closer contradicts this, suggesting that when people behave like animals, adhering only to their base desires and self-centered impulses instead of to conscience, morality, and promises, they end up lacking the blessings that human beings have the capability to enjoy. Closer—like We Don't Live Here Anymore, 2004's other "adultery film"—demonstrates that saying "It feels good, so it must be okay" leads to a relentless, heart-hardening search for satisfaction.

Adapted from Patrick Marber's play, Closer deals with themes as old as the story of David's malevolent conspiracy to take Bathsheba from her husband. Like Adam and Eve, the characters want whatever is out-of-bounds, and when they transgress, they tear the seams of their own lives and the lives of others.

Dan (Jude Law), a British obituary writer, is "in love" with Alice (Natalie Portman), an American dancing at a London strip club. Their eyes first met a few fluttering heartbeats before a truck knocked her flat, and Dan hurried her to the hospital—what a noble hero!—for some band-aids. Charmed, Alice flirts with him by polishing his glasses and performing other small revisions. Similarly, Dan writes a novel in which he "revises" Alice into a fictional character of his own fantasies. The reality, however, is sure to disappoint them in the end.

Jude Law plays Dan, a British obit writer, and Natalie Portman is Alice, a strip club dancer

Riding high on his novel's success, Dan seizes an opportunity to seduce a photographer named Anna (Julia Roberts) when their first meeting generates romantic sparks. After an initial kiss, Anna's conscience prods her to break free of him; she knows about Alice. But it's not long before Alice's heart is broken by the truth, and her trust in Dan is broken. Ever opportunistic, Anna snaps a photograph of Alice in her ruined state. With that, the relational disintegration begins in earnest.

Who's the fourth player? A dermatologist named Larry (Gosford Park's Clive Owen), who spends his professional time giving prescriptions and his spare time surfing the Web for pornography and cybersex. Online, he unwittingly becomes the pawn of a practical joker—Dan—who uses him to make Anna pay for her rejection. Dan doesn't realize he'll become the butt of his own joke. (Do Anna and Larry actually fall in love? Or is Anna merely working out a counter-revenge ploy against Dan?) Before you know it, two of them are married, adultery's close behind, one is paying for the indecent exposure of another, and they're all angrier, emptier, and placing the blame on everyone but themselves.

Anna and Larry (Clive Owen) discuss their relationship

It's an ugly film … like that picture of the ugly lung, but without the picture of the cigarette. We see the disease, but we have to interpret for ourselves the source of the problem. Closer isn't just sensationalized misbehavior; it's an earnest search for the root of unhappiness in the lives of four very different, yet similarly depraved people. It doesn't condone the sin; it exposes it.

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