Julia speaks like never before, 28 Dec 2005

By	Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews

CLOSER opens as Alice (Natalie Portman), a New York stripper on a visit to London, is grazed by a car after she's looks left instead of right stepping off the curb. She's taken to the hospital by a stranger, Dan (Jude Law), a writer wannabe with whom she starts a live-in relationship. Then, Dan sits for a formal portrait by photographer Anna (Julia Roberts), on whom he unsuccessfully hits. Subsequently, Larry (Clive Owen), a dermatologist, meets Anna, whom he marries, then divorces. On the rebound and needing physical comfort, Larry seeks out Alice, now shucking clothes at a London strip club after leaving Dan, whom he'd previously met at one of Anna's photo exhibits. (The timeline is murky; apparently all this happens over a couple of years.)

CLOSER is a film, painful to watch, of sexual manipulation, possession, and obsession in which the four principal characters inflict emotional cruelties on each other. It's not holiday fare for an afternoon out at the movies with your aged Mum. The language is sexually graphic and, in one sequence of scenes in the London strip joint, visually raunchy. CLOSER is, however, one of the best films of 2004. Julia Roberts is perhaps the biggest surprise as she shows that she can radically transcend - even beyond ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) - her usual cute roles; I was mightily impressed.

It would be hard to pick this film's lead and supporting parts. All four (Portman, Law, Roberts, Owen) have about equal screen time (though I wasn't keeping track with a stopwatch). Any, or all, of them were Oscar-worthy.

I had begun to doze about a quarter of the way into the film, but then woke up almost with a start as I realized that CLOSER is an exceptional adult film, without visually explicit sex or violence, that brutally shows grown-ups in dysfunctional relationships behaving at their very worst. Truly, as is indicated by a line in the film KINSEY:

"Sex is a dangerous game. If you're not careful, it can cut you wide open."

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