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The Movie Review: 'Closer'

"Flawlessly lucid"; "viciously insightful"; "quietly devastating"; "emotionally honest and psychologically dense"; "dares speak the truth about modern adult relationships." Those are a few of the phrases that were used to describe the movie Closer when it arrived in theaters late last year. Oddly, as best as I can tell, the following terms were absent from discussion of the film: "ridiculous"; "unmoored from reality"; "emotionally preposterous"; "unintentionally hilarious."

Closer , released on video today, is not a bad movie--or rather it is not merely bad. It's flamboyantly bad, bad in a way that can't help but be fascinating and even entertaining. It's well-enough executed, boasting a couple of good performances and one great one, and it's pleasant to look at. But it's also aggressively, irretrievably silly, a potty-mouthed fantasy that somehow mistakes itself for a fearless excavation of the dark recesses of the human soul, American Pie as reimagined by Neil LaBute.

Adapted by Patrick Marber from his own play, Closer follows two London couples who meet, fall in love, fall out of love, swap partners, and swap back again, in the process wounding one another in all the ways of which human beings are capable. Scratch that: The wounding is all pretty much of a single variety, specifically, being unfaithful to your (presumed) loved one and then describing the infidelity to him or her in excruciating detail. If this sounds familiar, it's probably because similar territory was plowed just a few months earlier in We Don't Live Here Anymore , a movie that shared Closer 's ludicrous belief that displaying unremitting cruelty is somehow the same thing as telling the truth. (You can read my review here .) But if the characters in the former film seemed transplanted from another decade, the characters in Closer seem transplanted from another planet. It's not just that they behave irrationally (though they do), they behave according to no recognizable set of human principles.

Take Dan, played by Jude Law. When we first meet him at the beginning of the film, he's a sweet, bespectacled, romantically timid obituary writer (think Hugh Grant in Notting Hill ) who unexpectedly falls in love with a beautiful young American named Alice (Natalie Portman) after she is hit by a car. The movie then flashes forward one year. Dan has just completed a sexually provocative novel (unmentioned in the first scene) and is being photographed for the book jacket by another beautiful American, Anna (Julia Roberts). Gone are his glasses, and with them any sign of his earlier demeanor: He's now smooth and predatory (think Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones's Diary ), putting the moves on Anna despite the fact that he now lives with Alice, who will arrive at the studio to meet him at any moment. About the only thing these two Dans have in common is Jude Law's face.

Having stolen a kiss from Anna but otherwise had his advances rebuffed (for the time being at least), Dan decides to play an unpleasant trick on her. He goes into an anonymous sex chat room on the Internet, where he encounters a deviant dermatologist named Larry (Clive Owen). Pretending to be Anna, Dan engages Larry in an X-rated dialogue and proposes a sexual assignation at a location he knows the elusive lady to frequent.

Onstage, this scene was apparently a showstopper, with Dan and Larry's raunchy exchange projected on the wall behind them. Onscreen, shorn of this gimmick, it's a strong contender for the silliest scene in a "serious" movie in the last 25 years. I'll say this once: If you are a male over the age of ten who believes that beautiful women get online to earnestly tell strange men "I love COCK" and "sit on my face, fuckboy," then you should turn your computer off right now and never turn it on again. I mean it.

Larry, having failed to receive my exceptional advice, goes to meet Anna, and finds her somewhat taken aback when he refers to her as a "cum-hungry slut." Anna, intuiting that this was all a prank set up by Dan, decides to spend the afternoon with Larry. Why? Because it's her birthday, and what better way to spend it than with a stranger about whom she knows nothing other than that he frequents pornographic websites in search of rough, anonymous sex?

In no time--literally, the film having taken another of its leaps forward--Larry and Anna are a couple, hosting a museum exhibit of her photos. Dan and Alice show up, and the former again woos Anna, whose defenses appear to be weakening. By our next temporal jump, Anna and Dan have been secret lovers for a year, though she has not allowed this detail to keep her from marrying Larry in the interim. When Dan breaks news of the affair to Alice, she cries; when Anna breaks it to Larry, he demands that she describe the flavor of Dan's ejaculate. "Like yours," she answers, "only sweeter." (Poor Julia, she never had such a filthy mouth back when she played a prostitute.)

From this point, the characters will ping-pong back and forth across the behavioral spectrum, swapping turns as villains and victims, masters and slaves. The innocent will turn out to be jaded and the jaded revealed to be innocent. I'll leave the details to the curious, except to warn of a particularly laughable scene in which Larry encounters Alice at a strip club--did I fail to mention that lovely, sweet, decent Alice is also a stripper?--to swap heartbreak stories and some more graphic sex talk. "I love everything about you that hurts," Larry confesses, moments before demanding that she drop trou, turn around, and bend over, "for my viewing pleasure."

Such ostentatious melodrama may have worked on stage, where emotional fireworks are sometimes the price of reaching people in the back rows. But the up-close medium of film requires either more subdued, realistic portrayals or an explicit admission of theatricality. What Closer needed was a director who would take it in the latter direction, recognizing that it bore no resemblance to the reality of urban romance and embracing its B-movie sleaziness. What it got instead was Mike Nichols, a director whose sense of his own cinematic daring has now outlived said daring by a few decades. Although Closer benefits from Nichols's technical command--it is inarguably a "well-made" film--it is very nearly sunk by the same self-admiring earnestness he displayed with the HBO miniseries Angels in America , another corny, out-of-date project that mistook itself for cutting edge.

That Closer manages to stay afloat, at least some of the time, is a testament to its cast. As Dan, Law digs a little deeper than he did in his dozen-odd other 2004 performances, almost finding a thread that can tie together his character's alternating recessive and assertive selves. Roberts gives a low-key, committed performance as Anna, although at times it's unclear what she's committed to . While playwright Marber makes the motivations of his male characters all too evident--varying combinations of sexual desire, sexual jealousy, sexual neediness, and sexual one-upsmanship--he seems at a loss as to why his ladies do what they do, eventually settling for the catchall explanations that Anna is a "depressive" and Alice is an impulsively self-reinventing mystery woman. (His male-centric lens is evident in a Larry line that appeared in the trailer but not the film itself: "You women don't understand the territory. Because you are the territory.")

But the great pleasure of the film, the best if not only reason to see it, is Clive Owen. He alone seems to grasp his character's fundamental ridiculousness, and he throws himself into the role with carnivorous gusto. With his big head and big hands, Owen physically dominates every scene he is in. His Larry is by turns ferocious and tender, meek and mighty, a Noble Savage for the telecommunications age. For a while now, Owen has been talked about as a possible heir to the throne of James Bond--a role in which he'd be magnificent, if only the franchise weren't some forty years removed from making films worthy of him. While Closer may not have won him an Oscar last month, his nomination was a suitable announcement of his arrival as an actor.

For all the accolades, the same cannot be said of Natalie Portman, who is the one broken link in Closer 's sexual daisy chain. The failure is not entirely her fault: Alice, like Anna, is a character whose motivations are not only largely unknown but by design unknowable, a walking argument for the inscrutability of womanhood. Moreover, it's hard to shake the impression that whoever came up with the idea of casting luminous china-doll Portman in the role of world-weary stripper has never actually seen the inside of a gentleman's club.

But Portman's disappointment extends beyond the particulars of the role. Early in her career, when she played child characters ( The Professional , Beautiful Girls ), she seemed old beyond her years. But somehow as she's graduated to adult roles she seems ever more like a child, as though she's shrinking before our eyes. (When, early in Closer , she jokingly describes herself as a "waif," the comment strikes a little too close to the mark.) Portman's tiny stature and delicate features contribute to this impression, of course, but there's more to it than that. As her star has ascended she's seemed somehow less and less touched by real life. For a while it was possible to put this off on her turn as George Lucas's child-queen. But in Closer , as in Garden State (and even her small role in Cold Mountain ), there's something disconcertingly girlish about her. She's a little too unsure of herself and eager to please, like a politician's good-girl daughter who's clever enough to recognize she's been coddled but not selfish enough to feel she deserves it. If Portman is to grow as an actress she will have to indulge herself more, forego her tentativeness and decency, and take what she wants without apology.

Closer would have been well-served had it done the same. For a movie so ardently committed to pushing the envelope, it ends rather timidly. Selfishness and deceit are punished; generosity and truthfulness are rewarded, at least relatively speaking. The final dramatic act, the slapping of a woman whom we imagine has been slapped before, is treated as a shocking, unforgivable transgression--this, by a film that has spent the previous 90 minutes engineering vicious sexual betrayals and congratulating itself on its bleak vision of the world. At Anna's photography opening, Alice describes the pictures as "a lie ... a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully." Closer is that, and less: a lie that in the end doesn't even have the conviction of its own malice.

The Home Movies List: Cruel Endings

The Third Man (1949). The last scene--the empty road, the falling leaves, Joseph Cotton leaning against a fence as Alida Valli walks past--is among the most bleakly beautiful of all time. Incredibly, in Graham Greene's original script, it played the other way, with Valli taking Cotton's arm. Thank goodness director Carol Reed had the sense to see that this story couldn't possibly end happily.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). Have the story and the telling ever been more wonderfully at odds than in Jacques Demy's masterpiece , a jaded humanist fable filled with color and music? Like Reed, Demy was wise enough to know that the ending audiences wanted was not one he could give them.

Get Carter (1971). A lean, vicious little film starring Michael Caine as a hoodlum who seeks vengeance for his brother's death and finds a great deal of it. Intoxicatingly unpleasant.

Silence of the Lambs (1991). Unique in this list, in that the filmmakers seemed oddly oblivious to the bitterness of its conclusion. After all the earnest urgency with which Clarice Starling sought Buffalo Bill, we're meant to think it funny at the end that a far more frightening monster has escaped.

The Last Seduction (1994). Crueler even than the ending of the film is that Linda Fiorentino--who must have known, even then, that this was the role of her lifetime--was deemed ineligible for Oscar consideration thanks to the film's debut on HBO.

This post originally appeared at TNR.com

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FILM REVIEW

When Talk Is Sexier Than a Clichéd Clinch

By A.o. Scott

Dec. 3, 2004

Like most interesting movies about sex, "Closer," Mike Nichols's deft film adaptation of a well-known play by Patrick Marber, is mostly talk. There are still a few filmmakers -- not all of them French -- who are capable of infusing the bodily expressions of erotic desire with dramatic force and psychological meaning, but the vast majority are content with a few moments of sheet-twisting and peek-a-boo montage.

In the past, Mr. Nichols has usually addressed sexuality with an elegant mixture of candor and discretion, and his intention in "Closer," which brings him back to the raw, needy emotions of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Carnal Knowledge," seems to be to show very little while saying a great deal. There is some display of skin: one of the characters, after all, is a stripper (another happens to be a dermatologist) and a pivotal scene unfolds in her place of work. But even that moment is less memorable for Natalie Portman's near-nudity than for the emotional self-exposure of the fully clothed Clive Owen.

The verbal intercourse that dominates that scene and every other in the film is vigorous, compulsive, sometimes painful and occasionally funny, as well as more stimulating -- for the characters, one suspects, as much as the audience -- than the physical intercourse that is its frequent subject. It is also mannered, schematic and frequently improbable, defects in Mr. Marber's play that Mr. Nichols and his strenuously engaged cast labor mightily to overcome.

Although "Closer" moves gracefully through the streets and rooms of contemporary London, it never quite shakes off the stasis and claustrophobia that haunt even the best screen adaptations of self-conscious, over-reaching serious drama. At times, the smooth naturalism of Mr. Nichols's direction emphasizes the archness and artificiality of Mr. Marber's dialogue and the unreality of the people speaking it.

Nonetheless, those people, though they are increasingly difficult to like, do manage to command a degree of curious attention. There are four of them, free-floating representatives of the disconnected contemporary tribe of wandering city-dwellers, arranged by Mr. Marber (who wrote the screenplay) and Mr. Nichols into a tight, ever-shifting grid of jealousy, longing and deceit.

The opening sequence is a barbed variation on the romantic comedy cliché of "meeting cute." Ms. Portman, playing Alice, a transplanted American, ambles along a crowded sidewalk. Walking toward her is Jude Law, whose character, Dan, is a newspaper obituary writer with literary aspirations. Their eyes lock across an intersection, into which Alice steps -- looking, as Americans will, in the wrong direction. The taxicab that knocks her down is a hulking metaphor for the narrative that follows, in which Alice and Dan -- along with Larry (Mr. Owen) and Anna (Julia Roberts), whose own cute meeting via mistaken identity and the Internet soon follows -- collide by accident, continually blindsided by one another and by their own feelings.

Mr. Nichols cleverly communicates their disequilibrium by detaching their stories from the usual chronological guideposts. Sometimes the cut from one scene to the next will leap across months or even years, and rather than signal the jump with words on the screen, the film keeps us guessing about how much time has passed until a line of dialogue supplies a clue. A great deal of significant action takes place off screen, in those temporal gaps, and what we are witnessing are premonitions and repercussions -- the flirting that precedes and the fighting that follows.

One effect of this dislocation is to endow a very simple story with a feeling of complication and surprise. Unlike most movie love stories, "Closer" does have the virtue of unpredictability. The problem is that, while parts are provocative and forceful, the film as a whole collapses into a welter of misplaced intensity. Larry, Dan, Alice and Anna seem to find themselves in a constant state of emotional extremity, in part because the quiet, everyday moments of their lives have been pruned away, but for precisely that reason their tears and rants seem arbitrary and a little absurd.

They are four characters in search of an objective correlative, their intimacies obstructed by lofty words -- honesty, cowardice, love -- that seem, after a while, to mean nothing at all. When the two official couples, their relationships threatened by symmetrical unofficial coupling, reach their climactic confrontations, it's hard not to wonder, "What on earth are they so worked up about?"

That question becomes more acute, and more damaging, when you step back to ask yourself who these people are and why you should care about them. Neither question gets much of a satisfactory answer. We know that the women are American, the men English, and allusions to past relationships and class backgrounds pop up now and then, but these four theoretical beings dwell mainly in a state of isolation amounting nearly to abstraction, without friends, families, legible pasts or probable futures. They exist only from moment to moment and only in relation to one another.

This places an enormous burden on the actors, who must in effect forge personalities out of thin air and vague language. The only one who succeeds is Mr. Owen, whose volcanic charisma is hedged -- and to some extent subverted -- by a flash of rugged wit. Faced with such a rival, Mr. Law wisely declines to defend the "Sexiest Man Alive" title recently conferred on him by the discerning folks at People magazine. Instead, he dismantles the smooth, ingratiating persona that has brought him to the brink of being a movie star and in the process reclaims his legitimacy as a nimble and clever actor.

Ms. Roberts tries to do something similar, but with less satisfying results. Anna, whose serial deceptions of Larry and Dan seem, for a time, to be driving the narrative, is a smudgily written character to begin with -- watchful, morose, yet somehow able to compel her would-be lovers and herself into self-destructive fits of passion. In the name of seriousness, Ms. Roberts suppresses her natural radiance, as if the admonition Do Not Smile were imprinted in heavy black ink on every page of her script.

Her ability to neutralize her own considerable magnetism is impressive, even admirable, but it is also self-defeating. Ms. Roberts may be bored with her own power to attract, but Anna's inertia weakens the already tenuous logic of Mr. Marber's play.

Which leaves Alice, the character in whom Mr. Marber's worst failings and Mr. Nichols's best instincts coalesce. By now (but also in 1997, when the play was first performed), the tough-yet-vulnerable stripper is worse than a cliché, and Ms. Portman bravely tackles the acrobatic challenge of simultaneously inviting and deflecting the audience's prurient, fascinated gaze. Her soft, wobbly features emphasize Alice's childishness, making her performance both the most sympathetic in "Closer" and the most troubling. She awakens a queasy protective impulse, a fantasy of rescue that is all the more powerful for being confused.

Do you want to save poor Alice from the toxic intimacy that Dan, Anna and Larry offer, or do you want Ms. Portman to escape from a movie that, in spite of the teasing promise of its title, does everything it can to push you away.

"Closer" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for a great deal of graphic talk and a few visually suggestive moments.

'Closer' Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Mike Nichols; written by Patrick Marber, based on his play; director of photography, Stephen Goldblatt; edited by John Bloom and Antonia Van Drimmelen; production designer, Tim Hatley; produced by Mr. Nichols, John Calley and Cary Brokaw; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 110 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Natalie Portman (Alice), Jude Law (Dan), Julia Roberts (Anna) and Clive Owen (Larry).

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Closer Reviews

'People are filthy, they're not worth lifting a finger for.' Closer conveys this sentiment more powerfully than anything else.

Full Review | Feb 15, 2021

Clive Owen gives the deepest and most emotionally nuanced performance as a dermatologist desperate for love and loyalty, and Natalie Portman is a close second as the coy stripper beholden to Jude Law's self-centered, stalled writer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 6, 2020

Closer's world is a gentle one, a place of kindness. It is these people who are bringing spite into it.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2020

Each frame of the film seems infused with vibrant life, even when the tone switches from dark to darker.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 5, 2019

For all its stunt casting and knee-jerk sexual frankness, Closer gives an underlying resonance to an emotional world that is normally the preserve of glossy soap operas.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 23, 2019

Closer takes the traditional notion of romance and attempts to batter it into submission, mostly through the constant application of swear words.

Full Review | Aug 24, 2017

The heart isn't a fist any more than the hand is a foot, and anyway there's no fist so tight that doesn't unfold into an open hand sometime. The movie is like a comedy someone dipped in a solvent.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jun 4, 2014

Searing story of betrayal isn't for kids.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 22, 2010

Closer is no joke and it's got the brave, mature performances of an all-star cast to prove it. It's a movie in which characters feel each other up with their hands and knock each other down with words.

Full Review | Original Score: 74/100 | Jun 7, 2010

With a better script, Closer could have been compelling romantic drama; instead, it's little more than clichéd nonsense.

Full Review | Original Score: 34/100 | Sep 26, 2009

Nichols ... simply stuns with a beautiful production, excellent script, unconventional and rather hateful story, and excellent acting all around.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 29, 2009

Mike Nichols teases up a similar level of emotional dysfunction to "Carnal Knowledge" with a filmic rendition of Patrick Marber's stage play about sexual one-ups-man-ship.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Apr 18, 2009

Like dramas by Pinter and others, what seems trenchant and perfectly pitched in the theater can come off as arch even when skillfully transferred to film.

Full Review | Mar 19, 2009

Four beautiful, despicable characters find everything but love in this borderline sadistic battle of words from Mike Nichols.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 27, 2007

It's only as good as its cast. Fortunately, it's a good cast.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 30, 2007

Marber looks at farcical giddiness with a hard-won sobriety.... Closer is a voguish farce that, rather than making you wish you were like the characters, makes you wish that you hadn't been.

Full Review | May 28, 2007

click to read article [Greek]

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 31, 2006

Owen and Portman give excellent, committed performances, leaving Law and Roberts in the shade.

Full Review | Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 11, 2006

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DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

Natalie Portman as Alice; Jude Law as Dan; Julia Roberts as Anna; Clive Owen as Larry

Home Release Date

Mike Nichols

Distributor

Columbia Pictures

Movie Review

This brutal look at love and relationships as they occur naturally in the wild—without the benefit of moral structure or even basic common sense—uses London as its dreary backdrop.

It’s lust at first sight when Dan spies Alice on a city sidewalk. She must feel the same way because she’s so busy staring at him she walks smack into an approaching taxi. He promptly shepherds her to the hospital to get her scrapes bandaged; then the two break the sound barrier transitioning from sharing significant glances to sharing a bed and an apartment.

Not so very much later, it is craving at first sight when Dan, an aspiring novelist, poses for a book jacket photograph taken by Anna. She repels him at first, reminding him that he’s already “taken.” But, of course, that small detail doesn’t stop them for long. All they need is the right environment, and that, seemingly, can only be had after Anna becomes involved with Larry. Before the sad, steamy soap opera ends, everyone has cheated and re-cheated on everyone else, and nobody’s even close to what any sane mind would dare think of as happy.

Positive Elements

The film is so soiled that every instinct I have tells me to simply write, “None.” But by painting such a dismal picture of love as practiced outside of God’s perfect plan, Closer comes very close to proving His point: that a monogamous, persevering commitment to marriage is the only way it works.

Twice, characters refer to the virtues they believe separate us from animals: honesty and forgiveness. Both are sorely abused by this grim gaggle of would-be lovers, but their crass manipulation inadvertently reveals these virtues’ value. When Larry bludgeons Anna with an “honest” report of his solicitation of a prostitute, for instance, he claims he loves her so much he simply can’t lie to her. Not so, Larry. If you loved her so much, you’d have used your dedication to honesty as a hedge to prevent you from buying sex to begin with. Larry doesn’t learn that truth, but anyone watching with more than half a brain engaged will recognize it immediately.

Spiritual Elements

Courting Anna, Larry embraces her love for aquariums, stating, “We were fish long ago, before we were apes.”

Sexual Content

No one is actually seen simulating sex. But that doesn’t mean Closer is light on explicit sexual content. The conversations about sexual couplings are almost unimaginably obscene, and include the most extreme terminology and descriptions available in the English language. Graphic discussions emphasize masturbation, prostitution, stripping, oral sex, homosexuality, manual stimulation and orgasms.

We meet Larry as he’s engaging in cybersex. For what seems like half an eternity, we watch him typing out rude, crude and socially unacceptable comments, and hurling them toward the object of his lust, which he thinks is a woman. It’s not. It’s actually Dan pretending to be a woman—Anna to be precise. (While the two are typing, banner ads displayed on their computer browsers feature sexual poses and nudity.) Unaware of Dan’s deception, Anna meets Larry in real life and promptly begins dating him, completely unconcerned that he is an unqualified pervert—even after she learns of his anonymous Internet dealings with Dan.

Alice tells Dan she’s a stripper when they first meet. Later she proves it—onscreen—in a lengthy scene devoted to her exhibitionist craft. Topless pole dancers are seen in a club; then the camera enters a private room where Alice and Larry converse endlessly about, among other things, the intricacies of strip club rules and the specific body parts routinely on display. Alice wears only thong panties and a bra during the exchange, strutting seductively and striking sexual poses for him as the camera plays peekaboo, just barely avoiding showing her breasts and genitals when she either takes off or puts on her “gear,” as Larry calls it.

A floor-to-ceiling photograph of a nude pregnant woman serves as a (out-of-focus) backdrop for a conversation between Larry and Alice.

Violent Content

Alice’s run-in with the taxi isn’t shown, but she’s seen lying prone in the street, and her bloodied leg is glimpsed. Dan slaps Alice full across the face after she spits in his.

Crude or Profane Language

About 40 f-words, half of which are used in a sexual context. A handful of s-words. Jesus’ name is forcefully abused three times. The f-word is substituted for God’s name in one particularly polluted slice of dialogue. Male and female sexual anatomy is referred to (about a dozen times) with American and British slang too obscene even to hyphenate in this review.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Characters smoke cigarettes on several occasions. Two of them insist they’ve given up the habit, but never seem to actually refuse the offer of another stick. Most consume beer, champagne or hard liquor at various points in the story.

Clive Owen, Jude Law, Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman all lose themselves in the script, turning in amazingly grim and moody performances that honor its tone in a way rarely seen in anything short of a true art film. And because of that, Closer succeeds in reducing once-cheerful audiences to brooding, miserable masses. While Damien Rice’s haunting lyrics (“Did I say that I loathe you?/Did I say that I want to/Leave it all behind? … I can’t take my mind off of you … ‘Til I find somebody new”) bracket the movie, much of its central conflict is carried on in a musicless void, accentuating the emptiness and loneliness being experienced by its principal players.

But since every character deserves every ounce of pain he or she experiences due to absurdly stupid decisions, I just can’t shake the feeling that this is all an exercise in foulness and futility. Are we really, after all, supposed to feel shocked and depressed when four so-called adults reap the whirlwind of hate and disgust for callously following their lust? Are we supposed to be appeased by this quartet’s fixation with being honest and transparent, and think somehow that their sins are mitigated by it? And if the message here isn’t that “honesty” is the solution—which it clearly isn’t for these hapless humans—is it then the reverse? Should we be learning that relationships only survive if we care enough to lie ?

Julia Roberts saw the Patrick Marber play on which Closer is based long before accepting the role of Anna. “I didn’t like it, not because it wasn’t good but because it was just so ugly to me,” she told Newsweek . “In London theaters they serve ice cream at the concession stands, and I remember standing up when the play was over and seeing all these ice-cream wrappers on the floor and thinking, ‘Ice cream? What we need are martinis and razor blades.'”

Her revulsion didn’t stop her from starring in the movie, but I’m hoping it might have a somewhat different effect on her fans.

Steven Isaac

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Review: Mike Nichols 'Closer'

David Edelstein

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Closer, starring Jude Law and Natalie Portman, and directed by Mike Nichols.

Original Cynics

(Photo credit: Courtesy of Columbia Pictures)

The first time Jude Law’s Dan kisses Julia Roberts’s Anna in Closer , Roberts moves into their clinch with her eyes alert, as though searching her partner’s face for a desire equal to her character’s own. When the kiss is completed, Roberts pulls back and her eyes flutter once and glaze over just a little. In a few silent seconds, she’s conveyed Anna’s intense longing for a passion she’d all but given up on finding, and she’s almost literally stunned.

This is great movie-star acting, which I intend as a high compliment. For a celebrity as familiar as Roberts, it’s exceedingly difficult to surprise an audience, but I’ll bet you’re going to come away from Closer feeling you’ve seen sides of her talent she’s never been given the opportunity to reveal before now. Playing a shrewd, jaded photographer—the sort of artist who needs to use people as objects in her portraits and who turns herself off to them as people as well—Roberts denies us the sparkly glances and the endearing hoot of a laugh that have made her so winning in the past. As part of a vicious love quartet, she gives a ruthlessly spare performance that will rip at your heart if you’re willing to let her in there.

Yes, there are three other stars in Closer , directed by Mike Nichols and based on Patrick Marber’s hit play set primarily in London. There’s Law’s Dan, a self-pitying obituary writer; Clive Owen’s Larry, an arrogant physician; and Natalie Portman as Alice, a stripper who can convincingly refer to herself as a naïf. Marber’s play and his film adaptation of it have this foursome falling for each other in every combination except the homosexual one. The couples couple constantly, break up, and blurt things like “Men are crap” and “I love everything about you that hurts.”

Nichols is back, his instincts for intimacy as cutting as ever, to territory he mined in Carnal Knowledge and in another play turned movie, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? After the epic sprawl the director oversaw with last year’s Angels in America , Nichols takes a rootless, restless approach to predatory mating games. A mere change of scene can propel the drama months ahead in time, but we gather this only from a few stray lines of dialogue. It’s Nichols’s way of keeping us as off-kilter as his characters’ emotions are, yet the movie itself never wobbles or drifts the way oddball flops like What Planet Are You From? (2000) and Wolf (1994) did. The protagonists marry, divorce, cohabit, flee the country, or hunt each other down for one last mercy fornication—except that in Nichols and Marber’s cramped, damp universe, people are merciless and the fornicating is four-letter-word-humorless. There are bed scenes at once so wry and so despairing, they give new meaning to the phrase “dry humping.”

The minimalism of Marber’s dialogue and structure—there’s almost no one else in Closer except these four—certainly helps the director’s sleek rigor, but Nichols and his actors also redeem some of Marber’s occasionally stiff notions of conversation. Owen must muster all his frowsy, stubbled charm, for example, to toss off an aperçu such as “She has the moronic beauty of youth,” and I’m still not sure I wouldn’t just giggle if someone said that to me. Especially about Natalie Portman. Portman herself is wonderfully wounded and bitter. All that advance publicity about her randy men’s-club dancing scenes, how Nichols shot her nekkid but she doesn’t go-go all-nude here, just gets in the way of appreciating her true achievement: She’s angry and alluring even when she’s in nothing but a G-string and a pink wig.

As for the men, Law caps his ceaseless season of releases with the anti-Alfie: Law makes this guy’s desperate, vacillating love for both Anna and Alice the poignant dither of a sniveling conniver. Owen has a showier part than Law (Owen played Law’s part on the stage, so perhaps he knew better how to upstage his co-star), and his brute energy makes us enjoy nearly every one of Dr. Larry’s brash pronouncements about love and sex.

Closer is marred by some drippy music courtesy of Damien Rice and a small-surprise ending that feels like gimmicky irony. But the film’s core idea is compelling: The four lives that contort to become closer end up further apart, and in immense pain. The perpetual pursuit of love, when practiced by adults instead of adolescents, can lead to something worse than mere heartbreak: enduring heartache.

Hooray for Hollywood—um, Broadway . Closer is just the first of three plays to jump to the silver screen this winter. On December 24, John Madden’s adaptation of David Auburn’s Tony-winning Proof opens, with Gwyneth Paltrow reprising the part she played on the London stage (a role originated by Mary-Louise Parker): a genius mathematician’s grieving daughter . On the 22nd, Joel Schumacher opens Phantom of the Opera —the first big-screen version of the musical, though there have been many adaptations of the novel, including one that hilariously starred Nightmare on Elm Street ’s Robert Englund (Freddy) as the Phantom.

Closer Directed By Mike Nichols. Columbia Pictures. R.

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Is ‘Closer’ Actually Good or Are We Just Obsessed With Natalie Portman’s Pink Wig?

Mike Nichols' drama strips away romance to show real human nature, warts, pink wigs, and all.

The Big Picture

Closer flips traditional theater expectations on their head by pushing the boundaries with its cast of Hollywood stars.
The film delves into the shallow nature of intellectuals and reveals the performative aspects of modern relationships.
Chance encounters in Closer lead to heartbreak and tragic irony, making it difficult not to empathize with the flawed characters.

Generally, film adaptations of iconic works of theater are thought to be old-fashioned, stately dramas with eloquent monologues that have been performed for generations, but anyone expecting something that traditional was in for a shock if they saw Closer . The 2004 drama from legendary filmmaker Mike Nichols took inspiration from Patrick Marber ’s hit 1997 play of the same name and featured some of Hollywood’s finest actors spouting inflammatory, filthy remarks that might even make Quentin Tarantino blush. It’s an outrageous take on the notion of “intellectual society,” and it certainly attracted tabloid attention due to an extended sequence where Natalie Portman performs a striptease while wearing a pink wig – a now iconic cinematic image. Although Closer could be dismissed as nothing but an exercise in boundary-pushing at first glance, it’s a satire that cuts much deeper than that.

The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.

What Is 'Closer' About?

Set in modern-day London, the film centers on the romances, breakups, and affairs between four people that become obsessed with controlling each other. Portman stars as Alice Ayres, a young woman trying to find herself, who is nearly killed in a streetway collision. Alice is saved by the writer Dan Woolf ( Jude Law ), who subsequently falls in love with her. After writing a book about their experiences together, Dan begins to lust after the photographer Anna Cameron ( Julia Roberts ), who rebuffs his flirtations which Alice overhears but does not confront Dan about. Dan continues to channel his desires by goading the British dermatologist Larry Gray ( Clive Owen ) into a sexually-charged online chatroom that embarrasses him in front of Anna. However, Larry and Anna begin to fall in love after recognizing that they’ve been deceived.

Why 'V for Vendetta' Should Have Been Natalie Portman's True Superhero Debut

Closer is filled with cacophonous dialogue said behind closed doors; since the film is entirely composed of conversations between these four actors, it replicates the experience of watching a theatrical production. Generally, these constraints can be uncinematic, but it's perfect for the concept that Closer is addressing . We’re getting to know the types of conversations that people have in private, and hear about the desires that they’re so frightened to admit in public. While it reveals the shallow nature of intellectuals, Closer unlocks something deeper about the performative nature of modern relationships. Similar to his past films The Graduate and Carnal Knowledge , Nichols uses shocking stylistic indulgences to show something that is very real. In many ways, Portman and her infamous wig are the summation of Closer ’s brilliance; there’s an aura of plasticity that people have when they’re forced to be vulnerable.

'Closer' Strips the Romance Away From Chance Encounters

In fiction, “chance encounters” are often romantic in nature, so it’s amusing that every chance encounter in Closer ends up leading to heartbreak and tragedy. It’s reflective of human nature that despite being given a once-in-a-lifetime romantic opportunity, Dan squanders his relationship with Alice. What Nichols does that is critical is refusing to judge any of these characters for their secret desires. None of them come out as complete victims, and there’s reason to see them all as both detestable and tragic. Initially, we’re supposed to dislike Dan because of his affairs and deceit, but we learn at the end of the film that Alice has been lying to Dan about her real identity. It’s ironic that despite Dan’s obsession with leading people into false relationships online, he doesn’t realize he’s fallen in love with someone he doesn’t really know .

Similarly, there’s irony in Larry and Anna falling in love after a cruel prank. However, this ironic “chance encounter” is also one that’s quickly squandered, as Larry can’t help but feed into his own indulgences when he recognizes Alice’s portrait in a photography gallery of Anna's work. Larry was always driven by his aggressive sexual impulses, which is what Dan initially had taken advantage of. He’s well aware that Alice and Dan are involved with each other, but pursues Alice nonetheless. This is satirically framed alongside Dan’s own affair with Anna. Now, both couples are cheating on each other with their opposite's partners. It’s clever that these sordid conversations take place in a fancy art exhibit intended to show the beauty of human nature.

We Can't Help But Empathize With the Characters

The “chance encounters” they all shared with each other only created obsession and unlocked new desires; they can’t help but wonder what it might be like to be with someone else. No one ends up getting to have it both ways, and they all end up heartbroken. What’s incredible is that, despite every bitter way Larry, Anna, Alice, and Dan undercut one another, there’s reason to invest in all of them. Alice is trying to make it in a society she doesn’t belong in; Dan is trying to create something artistically profound; Anna wants commitment but can’t help cheating; Larry is obsessed with “winning” because he’s terrified of showing cracks in his masculinity. None of them can help being who they are .

Even though they’re all left hurting because of their obsession with one another, they all end up alone through further ironies. Anna and Larry had sworn to sleep with each other for the last time in order to get revenge on their respective partners, but they were fully aware that they would just end up hurting each other in the end. Of course, the affair once again sparks their desires for each other, continuing their loveless marriage. Alice gained nothing from her encounters with upper society , and she’s left to drift through New York alone in the same state she was in at the beginning. Since Dan never knew Alice’s real name, so he has no way to find her. He notices a memorial for the woman Alice stole her name from; he’s fallen in love and is left grieving for someone that doesn’t exist.

By ending the film on such a solemn note, Nichols comes full circle in his critique. He wanted to show us who these people really are, and in the end, we’re guilty of feeling bad for them. If Nichols preys upon the idea that we’re getting to see what people are like underneath, we’re only able to laugh at them mockingly for a short amount of time. As the beautiful words of Damien Rice ’s “The Blower’s Daughter” play in the background, it’s as if we’re now guilty of having the same obsessions.

Closer is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV+ in the U.S.

WATCH ON APPLE TV+

Closer (United States, 2004)

If you pay attention to Hollywood's romantic comedies, the interaction between men and women is all about love and companionship. If you instead rely upon the philosophy of Closer , it's all about power. Closer starts like a nice romantic drama, with a couple of "meet cutes" (as Roger Ebert calls them), then does a 180-degree turn and shows what happens when happily ever after rots from the inside out. It isn't just the relationships that curdle, but the characters. Their interaction becomes bitter and cynical. Sex is a tool used in power struggles and one-upsmanship games. Although the word "love" is mentioned a few times, it has little place in this movie, where emotions are weaknesses to be exploited by others. With Closer , director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Patrick Marber (translating his stage play) have ventured into Neil LaBute territory ( In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors ). For Nichols, this is not new terrain - he has visited here twice previously, in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Carnal Knowledge . Put those two older films together with Closer and you get a grim trilogy that doesn't have a lot of good things to say about the human condition.

On the surface, Closer is the story of two couples whose infidelities rip them apart. Dan (Jude Law) and Alice (Natalie Portman) meet on the streets of London when she is hit by a car and he comes to her rescue. He takes her to a hospital and the pair are soon living together. But Dan, an obituary writer who has penned a novel, finds himself obsessed with Anna (Julia Roberts), a photographer who takes the picture for his book jacket. He wants her, and tells her so, but she demurs when she learns he has a live-in girlfriend. "You're taken," she comments, as if that puts an end to things. Dan inadvertently introduces Larry (Clive Owen) to Anna when a practical joke (in which he pretends to be Anna in an Internet sex chat room) goes awry. The two start a romance, and are eventually married. But there's sexual chemistry between Dan and Anna, and, to a lesser extent, between Larry and Alice. Over the next four years (the film occasionally jumps forward by months in order to span that much time), infidelities occur, betrayals are discovered, and all manner of ugliness ensues. From a physical standpoint, Closer is not a violent film. From an emotional one, it's brutal. Nichols doesn't pull his punches. You leave the theater shaken.

The film is notable for its frank dialogue. There's plenty of profanity and also a host of interesting observations. (Although these characters speak with an erudition not found in conversations between real people.) Closer is talky, but in a smart way. You never feel that the characters are talking to hear their own words or to fill up screen time. Nevertheless, those unaware that the story began its life as a play will not be surprised to learn this fact. Yet the rawness of emotions keeps us from noticing how few sets there are, and how little conventional "action" occurs.

The film turns the tables on just about everyone. Users become victims, and vice versa. Innocence is corrupted, and corruption learns too late that there's no return path. Alice, who is arguably the most naïve member of the ensemble (despite being a stripper by profession), is hurt the most deeply, and that pain results in an irrevocable change. Larry, a decent guy when the film starts, turns into a cold, calculating man, having sex on at least two occasions to torment Dan. In the end, he wants to possess Anna not out of love, but because doing so means beating Dan. But to paint Dan as guiltless is unfair - he's a weasel (albeit a charming one) and an instigator. He cheats without concern for repercussions, then is astounded when any of them impact him. Anna is fundamentally weak and dishonest. She doles out and receives hurt in equal measures.

In Closer , the actors get a chance to shine, and no one is brighter than Clive Owen. Despite a number of memorable turns (and one big mistake: King Arthur ), Owen still lacks household recognition. A likely (and deserved) Oscar nomination for this performance will change that. The ferocity with which Owen delivers his lines, and the restless energy he imparts to Larry, electrifies every scene that he's in. Closer 's two most riveting sequences involve Owen and Natalie Portman - one in an art gallery where they first meet, and the other in a strip club where he has all the money but she has the power, and uses it.

Portman, in what has been called her first truly adult role (it's certainly nowhere close to Queen Amidala), is also very, very good. Like Owen, she must essay a character who undergoes a complete personality transformation - from vulnerable waif to ice queen seductress. There's a rawness and courage to her work (and, although there's no overt physical nudity due to camera placement, her scenes in the strip club are frank). The aforementioned scenes are Portman's highlights as well as Owen's, and she has one other - a heartbreaking moment in which she turns to the camera with tears on her face, and we recognize that the first piece of Alice's innocence has been stolen.

It would be unfair to describe either Julia Roberts' or Jude Law's performances as "lesser," but the two high-profile actors are not on the same level as their compatriots. Each has their moments, but neither captures the attention of the camera with the intensity of Owen or Portman. This is Roberts the actress, not Roberts the movie star (see Ocean's Twelve if you're craving for the latter), and her dedication to the role rather than glamour serves her well. Law is a little flat; I actually found him more convincing in Alfie .

Movies that look deeply into the human soul and uncover putrefaction are hard sells. But they are also some of the most fascinating films to be found. Are Nichols and Marber's characters too cynically drawn? Perhaps. Do they occasionally seem like marionettes manipulated by a clever writer? Yes. But those things don't diminish the film's compelling emotional qualities. Closer is powerful and disturbing stuff. It is not life-affirming, and it's not for those who want to leave a movie theater uplifted and convinced that fairy tale endings can happen. And this is most definitely not a date movie. But if you appreciate films that are more substance than style, that take challenges and don't follow formulas, and that feature Oscar-caliber performances, Closer is not to be missed.

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Closer Review

14 Jan 2005

Mike Nichols has always been drawn to the mysteries of sexual entanglement as expressed in rich, theatrical dialogue. In Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, he stuck close to Edward Albee's play about a nastily complex two-couple evening; in Carnal Knowledge, he shot cartoonist Jules Feiffer's original script about two men and their contrasting attitudes to women over the decades.

Closer, scripted by Patrick Marber from his own play, could just have been a smart scrambling of these two earlier films. But it's far more than that, thanks to its fiercely distinctive voice and a powerhouse ensemble more than capable of holding its own against the much-lauded teams of Virginia Woolf (a film where the entire cast was Oscar-nominated) and Carnal Knowledge.

After the lightweight Lothario of Alfie, Jude Law's Dan is a much more involving character; restless and pathetic, sad and sadistic (his internet come-on to Clive Owen's Larry is horribly comic) and an always-crushed romantic. It's Law's best screen work to date, and he provides the anchor for awards-calibre scenes from Owen (who played Dan in the West End stage version) and an astoundingly sensual Portman (playing a pole-dancer and fulfilling the fantasies of too many sad Star Wars fans).

As for Roberts, if she's the palest of the quartet, it's because one of the most desirable women in the world invests her role with such a haunted chill you can't imagine Law leaving Portman for her or Owen being driven to such hilariously fiendish lengths to get her back. Nichols and Marber both have a background in comedy double acts, Nichols having exchanged neurotic barbs with former collaborator Elaine May and Marber having been Alan Partridge's all-purpose chat show guest. So Closer is a succession of tart two-hander sketches, strung together by wild sex and steady relationships, which skips over the months to see only the meet-cute and dissolve-ugly moments in the romantic square dance of these four people.

Movies | 30 09 2022

Screen Rant

Closer review.

This movie was better than I thought it would be but the characters are such idiots that I found it hard to enjoy the movie more than just marginally.

This movie was better than I thought it would be, but the characters are such idiots that I found it hard to enjoy the movie more than just marginally.

There's something I really don't understand. Why does Hollyweird always have such a huge need to adapt stage plays into movies? It doesn't make any sense. With the recent release of Rent and The Producers , I feel like I'm in movie hell. The film adaptation of Closer , written by Patrick Marber and based on his play, is a classic example of why I hardly ever go to see stage plays. Most of them are just too morbid and depressing to be enjoyable. I mean, think about it... when was the last time you saw a happy, uplifting stage play? And take my word for it, the words "happy" and "uplifting" are in no danger of being associated with this movie.

For all its faults, Closer is actually quite well-made. In fact, it was better than I thought it was going to be. It basically involves four people who talk for an hour and a half, so I wasn't expecting to be blown away. The subject matter is unpredictable and edgy enough to be entertaining, though, if not a little shocking at times. (Children should not see this movie for more reasons than I have room to list here.) The bottom line is that if you're going to direct a stage play, it's hard to find someone better than Mike Nichols. My biggest issue with Nichols' films is that he tends to focus on keeping the material edgy and challenging, rather than entertaining the audience. In some cases, that works really well, but with others, that's not quite the case. Overall, I mildly enjoyed Closer , but the movie is an exercise in frustration to watch, as I'll explain.

The story is set in London, and it starts out with Dan (played by Jude Law) and Alice (played by Natalie Portman) seeing each other from across a crowded street. Before Dan can introduce himself, though, Alice is promptly mowed down by a car while she's in the crosswalk, so he goes with her to the hospital. It turns out that she didn't sustain any major injuries, but during the time Dan and Alice have spent together, they really hit it off. Fast-forward to a few months later, and Dan has written a book about the experience. He's in a photography studio getting his picture taken for the book cover, when it suddenly dawns on him that the photographer, Anna (played by Julia Roberts), is an attractive young woman. Despite the fact that Dan has a girlfriend, he hits on Anna, and after a little initial hesitation, she reciprocates... sort of. From that point on, Dan is fascinated with Anna, but he still has feelings for Alice. I was starting to get a headache by this point.

The next part of the story has Dan playing an internet prank on a doctor named Larry (played by Clive Owen). Dan pretends that he's Anna, and he has Larry meet her at a local aquarium. To everyone's surprise, despite the initial awkward moment, Larry and Anna really hit it off, and before you can say "totally unrealistic," Larry and Anna are married. But do you think that's going to stop Dan and Anna from getting their freak on? If you said "heck no," give yourself a gold star! Before you know it, the relationship between Dan and Alice is in trouble, then Anna and Larry's marriage is in trouble, then Dan tries to get together with Anna, then Larry tries to get together with Alice... I really had a serious headache by this point.

What really shocked me about this movie was how open everyone was with each other. If people really talk like that in London, I never want to visit that place again. As an example, Anna describes to Larry in graphic detail about what she did with Dan, who had what reaction when, etc. And she tells that to Larry because he asks her! Call me crazy, but I'm guessing that's not something Dr. Phil would recommend to help a struggling couple get the spark back into their relationship. The most frustrating thing about the movie is that out of the four lead characters, not one is clinically sane. They are all completely nuts, and they are all idiots. Dan is an idiot for cheating on Alice even though they have a (supposedly) happy relationship. Alice is an idiot for staying with a loser like Dan. Anna is an idiot for getting involved with a loser like Dan, even when she's married. Larry is an idiot for staying with Anna, even though he knows she's trouble. When all the main characters are idiots, how can they be likable? And how can a movie be enjoyable if there isn't a single likable character in it?

I won't reveal what finally ends up happening with all these dysfunctional relationships, but it really doesn't matter because we don't have much reason to care. This movie, if nothing else, serves as a great example of what you should not do if you want to keep a relationship alive and well. For all its faults, though, the movie ultimately keeps the viewer interested, not so much in what happens, but rather in the characters themselves. The story development is fairly lackluster, but the character development is quite good, as you would expect from a stage play. I mildly enjoyed Closer because it kept me interested in finding out more about the characters, but I couldn't enjoy it more than that because all the main characters were such idiots that it was hard to really care about what happened to them. I think it's time to go watch A Few Good Men again. Now that's how a stage play should be adapted into a movie...

The Ending Of Closer Explained

2004's "Closer" is all about relationships and has some truly hilarious moments, but it's basically the opposite of a romantic comedy. Dan ( Jude Law ), Alice ( Natalie Portman ), Anna ( Julia Roberts ), and Larry (Clive Owen) take turns being miserable and manipulative as their lives repeatedly collide over the course of a few years. Some of the characters might be a little more well-adjusted than others, but by the end of the movie it's pretty clear that all of them have some issues they need to work through.

Directed by Mike Nichols and written by Patrick Marber, "Closer" earned plenty of plaudits at the time, with Portman and Owen both getting Oscar nominations for their work. They give mesmerizing performances that you really can't look away from, even if the characters occasionally make you want to hide your eyes. It won't go down as one of the best romantic movies of all time , but it's an undeniably entertaining film about how relationships go bad — and how they can start bad, too. The characters in "Closer" live in a whirlwind of possessiveness, obsessiveness, and jealousy that makes just about every relationship appear doomed to fail.

Because the relationships in "Closer" are so unstable, they can also be a little hard to follow. The story breezes past entire years as lies pile on top of betrayals and cause relationships to fall apart and come back together. Here's how it all turned out and what the ending of the film means.

What you need to remember about the plot of Closer

What's worse than an unhealthy relationship? Two unhealthy relationships. "Closer" starts by introducing Alice, a former stripper fueled by wanderlust, and Dan, a failed novelist turned obituary writer. The two hit it off and start dating, but their honeymoon phase doesn't last that long. Dan finally publishes a book, and he becomes infatuated by Anna, a professional photographer who's hired to take Dan's picture for the novel's release. When they first meet, Dan kisses Anna, who almost immediately reveals the truth to Alice.

Despite what happened, Dan and Alice stay together. However, Dan just can't get Anna off his mind. As part of his strange obsession with her, Dan pretends to be Anna while talking to other men in online chat rooms. Dan decides to play a prank on one of them, telling a man named Larry to meet Anna at the aquarium the following day. As luck would have it, the real Anna actually is at the aquarium when Larry arrives, and after a supremely awkward first encounter, the two of them fall in love.

A year goes by, and Dan can't stop obsessing about Anna. He takes Alice to one of Anna's art gallery openings, and she meets Larry for the first time. Dan and Anna kick off an affair and they continue secretly seeing each other for the next year, even as Anna gets married to Larry.

What happens at the end of Closer?

Of course, Dan and Anna don't keep their affair a secret forever. Eventually the two of them tell their respective partners what's going on. Alice begs Dan to stay with her, but he refuses. She decides to completely disappear from Dan's life in response. Larry, on the other hand, is enraged at Anna and storms out of their apartment, but he becomes determined to win Anna back.

Some time passes, and Larry meets Alice for the second time. This time the two meet while Alice is working at a strip club, and later that night they sleep together. Larry keeps his relationship with Alice at just a one night stand. Anna files for divorce, and in a last ditch attempt to win her back, Larry tells Anna that he'll only sign the divorce papers if she agrees to sleep with him one last time. When Anna tells Dan what happened, he's horrified, and their relationship begins to deteriorate.

Amazingly, Larry's plan works. Dan and Anna completely fall apart, and she decides to get back together with Larry. Devastated, Dan shows up at Larry's office and begs for Anna back, but Larry tells him where to find Alice and urges Dan to get back together with her. Dan does restart things with Alice, but he becomes obsessed with knowing whether or not she slept with Larry. Alice realizes that Dan doesn't trust her, and she leaves him. As the movie comes to a close, we learn that Alice's real name is Jane — a fact she only ever revealed to Larry.

Does the ending of the play differ from the movie?

Adapting your own stage show into a movie seems like a fairly straightforward process, but no adaptation is ever one-to-one. Plus, no author can resist the opportunity to make changes to their own work. For the most part, both versions of Patrick Marber's "Closer" are the same. The movie and the play follow the same four characters, and their relationships progress and fall apart in nearly identical ways. Only a few details got changed from the stage to the screen, but some of those details make a big difference to the characters and to the ending.

The movie version of "Closer" removes an entire scene from the second act of the play. In the scene, Alice confronts Anna about her affair with Dan, and she takes a chance to steal back the pictures that Anna took of her when they initially met after Dan's photography session. This scene lets the two leading women have another tense interaction, and it also gives Alice much more agency in how her own story plays out. For whatever reason, the screenplay is more focused on the men of the story.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that Alice dies at the end of the play. Sadly, she gets hit by a car after returning to America. Dan flies over to identify her body because there's nobody else to do it. While this wasn't included in the movie, the final shot actually drops a massive hint about Alice's fate. Like at the beginning of the film, she's shown crossing a road, though eagle-eyed viewers have noticed that she's crossing with the "don't walk" sign lit up red. She escaped with her life when she was struck by a car in London, but the play tells us that she's not so lucky this time around.

Why does Dan introduce Anna to Larry?

Dan had no idea what he was setting in motion when he first introduced Larry to Anna. Of course, Dan didn't actually intend for the two of them to meet in person, and their chance encounter at the aquarium was mostly out of his control. However, it's still worth asking why Dan was pretending to be Anna while speaking to men in online chat rooms. One of Dan's biggest problems in both of his relationships is that he wants to possess whoever he's in love with. It's not enough for Dan to be with someone as an equal. He has to have some kind of power or control over the other person. That's why Dan blows up his relationships with Anna and Alice after learning that each of them slept with Larry.

When it comes to Dan's peculiar internet habits, pretending to be Anna is just one more way he feels like he can get control over her. In his mind, Dan can make Anna do anything he wants with anyone he wants when he's using her persona online. The scene where Dan and Larry chat online is definitely the funniest moment of the entire movie, but underneath the comedy is a look at the dark side of Dan's obsessive nature. In the end, it's his obsessiveness that ultimately ruins his chances of saving things with Alice, and the foundations of that moment are laid in scenes like this one.

Why did Anna and Larry get back together?

Dan may not be the nicest guy around, but that doesn't mean Larry gets to be automatically considered a catch. When Larry first meets Anna, he thinks she's come to the aquarium to meet him for sex, so he doesn't introduce himself the way a normal person would. Once Anna pieces together that Dan must have been playing a prank, she and Larry have a good laugh and go on to keep talking to each other. Sex and humor form the basis of their relationship, but Larry also has a darker side.

Larry is a little sex obsessed and sometimes quick to anger, but his biggest flaw — even though it works to his advantage in "Closer" — is that he's manipulative. Larry begs Anna to sleep with him one last time before finalizing their divorce, but later we find out that his real motivation was messing with Dan's head. Larry knew that if he and Anna slept together, Dan wouldn't be able to keep the relationship going.

Larry used sex as a weapon against Dan, but at the same time, he really did love Anna. The biggest difference between Larry and Dan is that Larry doesn't view Anna as something to control or possess. The love between them is genuine, if messy. They get back together because they always had feelings for each other and they figure out that those feelings are more important than everything that happened with Dan.

What lessons were learned?

It can be a little difficult to track everyone's relationship status in "Closer," so here's the general breakdown. Dan starts dating Alice. Anna starts dating Larry. Then Dan and Anna start sleeping together and keep it up even while Anna gets married to Larry. The truth comes out, so everyone breaks up. Dan and Anna start officially dating, but that doesn't last long. Anna gets back together with Larry. Dan gets back together with Alice, but then she leaves him when he won't stop asking if she slept with Larry while they were broken up.

That's enough back and forth for a lifetime, but every twist and turn taken sheds new light on the characters. In the beginning, Dan's obsession with the idea of love is stronger than his loyalty in a relationship. Anna also seemingly falls into that trap, keen on following her heart. Alice, meanwhile, has over-invested in her relationship with Dan and almost completely forgets about herself. Larry lands somewhere in the middle, but he also wants to get one over on Dan from the very beginning.

By the end of the movie, surely some important lessons have been learned? Well, it's hard to say whether or not the characters in "Closer" really learn anything from their experiences. Alice is the only one who seems to change her view on relationships and how to define her self-worth. The others are too locked into their own habits and gut impulses to really grow. At least the audience can learn something from watching their failures play out.

Why did Alice lie to Dan about her name?

"Closer" doesn't really have a twist ending, but the secret of Alice's real name does act as a final surprise in the story. When she first meets Dan, the two of them take a walk through Postman's Park, and before they go their separate ways for the day, she introduces herself as Alice Ayres. Most of us probably didn't think anything of the name, but Larry notices that something is strange when he meets Alice at the strip club where she's working.

At the club, Alice again introduces herself as Alice. Larry demands that she tell him her real name, which she says is Jane. He doesn't believe her, and their argument gets pretty heated. No matter how much Larry yells, Alice keeps insisting that she's not lying to him. It's not until the very end of the movie that the audience learns she really was telling the truth. After Alice finally ends her relationship with Dan, she decides to fly home to New York. When she's moving through customs, the camera shows her passport and reveals that she really is called Jane.

Back in London, a nostalgic Dan decides to take a solo walk back through Postman's Park. While he's making his way along the same path he once walked with Alice, he notices that the park has a small memorial for a woman named Alice Ayres. The revelation shows us that even though she was apparently obsessed with Dan, part of Alice always understood that their relationship could never last.

What will Alice do now?

The ending of "Closer" doesn't leave us with many questions about the characters who are living in London. Larry and Anna have found a way past their differences. They're back together, and, based on the conversation they had when they first split up, are presumably getting ready to have kids. Dan is working as the editor of his newspaper's obituary section. Alice, on the other hand, remains a bit of a mystery at the end of the movie. We know that she tragically dies in the play, but we don't see that play out in the film. As such, viewers are left to guess about what's in store for her.

When she first came to London, Alice seemed like a free spirit who wanted to travel and chase her own passions. In reality, she almost immediately tied herself to Dan and made their relationship the core of her identity. Because of that, we never really got a strong sense of what Alice actually wants for herself in life. Now that she's single and back in New York, there's really no telling what she's going to do. Alice herself might not even have any idea what she wants, but separating herself from Dan has finally given her an opportunity to figure that out. As long as she remembers to look both ways before crossing the road, the future is bright for her by the time the credits roll.

What has the cast and crew said about Closer?

Patrick Marber told The Guardian that he penned the majority of "Closer" on a writers' retreat in Ireland. He first imagined the characters who would later become Alice and Larry after being "dragged along to a lap-dancing club." Eventually, Alice's name came to him in Postman's Park, like in the movie. "When it was shot in London, I experienced the strangeness of there being a movie crew in little Postman's Park," he said. "It's odd how life works out."

In that same interview, Clive Owen opened up about his experience with "Closer." He read the original stage script and thought that it was "such an honest examination of the pain from relationships and what it feels like to be bereft." Owen jumped at the chance to act in a stage production of "Closer," but he didn't get the role he really wanted: Marber thought Owen was too young to play Larry, so he was given the role of Dan instead. Owen finally got to play Larry in the film, which he called "the most incredible gift."

The person who had the biggest influence on the film was late director Mike Nichols. Not only did he get a brilliant performance out of Natalie Portman, who called Nichols "the only older man who mentored me without there ever being a creepy element in it" in a book about his life (via People ), but it was reportedly also his idea to change the ending of the movie. According to an Entertainment Weekly report from the time, this big change (presumably removing Alice's death in New York) was a last minute one.

Classic Movies

Closer (2004) Movie Review: Dysfunctional Heterosexuals

Closer (2004) movie review summary: In this proudly artificial psychological drama, veteran director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Patrick Marber, adapting his own play, attempt to recreate the dysfunctional universe of heterosexual relationships previously seen – in more profound fashion – in Nichols’ own Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? .
In the four-pronged cast, Julia Roberts is the sole performer who delivers a well-rounded characterization.
Closer synopsis: Alice ( Natalie Portman ), an American immigrant in London, is struck by a taxi. Dan ( Jude Law ) helps her; they become an item. A year later, Dan flirts with another American, Anna (Julia Roberts), who, through Dan (posing as Anna online), meets (and marries) Larry (Clive Owen), who later tries to hook up with Alice.

Closer (2004) movie review: Mike Nichols’ latest take on dysfunctional hetero couples is no Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Mike Nichols’ first feature, a big-screen transfer of Edward Albee’s acclaimed Broadway play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , is a harrowing dissection of two married couples whose inner demons are let loose during a night of drinking, game playing, and out-of-control yelling. That was back in 1966. Fast forward to 2004 and to another Mike Nichols-directed big-screen transfer of an acclaimed play, Patrick Marber’s Closer , also about two dysfunctional heterosexual couples, but this time in the age of cyberspace and AIDS.

Apart from the fact that the story’s timeframe has been stretched from one night to a couple of years and that the early 21st-century drama takes place in London (instead of New England), on the surface not much has changed in the last four decades: The new quartet of neurotic heterosexual English speakers also dwells in a social bubble in which the participants bicker, yell profanities, pretend to be someone else, and are utterly vicious to one another.

On a deeper level, however, everything has changed.

With the assistance of four actors in top form – Elizabeth Taylor , Richard Burton, Sandy Dennis, George Segal – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? lays bare the entrails of its characters. Closer , on the other hand, barely scratches the surface of its one-dimensional protagonists, played with varying degrees of effectiveness by Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Clive Owen, and Natalie Portman.

Closer plot: Edward Albee vs. Patrick Marber

The dramatic chasm separating these two Mike Nichols efforts is clearly a direct consequence of their original sources. While Edward Albee’s words (adapted by Ernest Lehman for the big screen) pierce the carotid, Patrick Marber’s scrape an elbow and break a couple of fingernails.

For although the situations depicted in Closer are supposed to be uncompromisingly blunt, the absence of any sort of psychological context make all that lying, cheating, and nonstop partner-switching come across as mere titillation.

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An example: American-born, London-based photographer Anna (Julia Roberts) dumps her dermatologist husband Larry (Clive Owen) for untrustworthy obituary writer Dan (Jude Law) without Marber ever bothering to let us know why Anna and Larry – who seem to be polar opposites – got married in the first place, or what exactly attracted Anna to someone as unappealing as Dan.

Besides, we never get to see the adulterous affair behind Larry’s back or the disintegration of his marriage. Why, then, should anyone care when things become tangled up later on?

Not helping matters is Dan’s off-and-on girlfriend, the mysterious American Alice (Natalie Portman), who aimlessly bounces from here to there and then back to here again, only to make a momentous decision at the end of the movie that is as unexpected as it is trite; it comes out of nowhere, and – unlike in the play – it goes nowhere. So why bother?

Sex, lies & expletives

Perhaps as a means of taking away our attention from the vapidity of it all, Marber comes up with a full array of sexually explicit lines that are bandied about during heated arguments, e.g., “Do you enjoy sucking him off?” “Yes!” “You like his cock?” “I love it!”

Now, never-ending yelling about the joys of extra-marital fucking may (or may not) shock the pious, but it will probably leave most filmgoers feeling merely impatient. For no matter how many times Closer ’s four characters resort to sex talk – and that is all the sex they have on screen – nothing dissipates the overall artificiality of the dialogue and situations.

In the confines of the stage, such lack of realism may be permitted or even strived for, but in the naturalistic settings of Mike Nichols’ London it just looks silly.

Piling on the nonsense, an unnecessary plot twist before the final credits feels like a gratuitous head-scratcher, adding nothing to our understanding of what went on earlier. (No, it doesn’t involve Dan and Larry hooking up for life, though that would have explained a lot about their behavior toward women.)

Julia Roberts shines, Jude Law does Alfie reprise

Despite the poorly delineated characters that inhabit the Closer realm, Mike Nichols, known for his capable handling of actors ( Ann-Margret in Carnal Knowledge , Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl , etc.), elicits at least a modicum of substance from three of the four leads – with Natalie Portman’s irredeemably stilted Alice being the sole exception.

Stripped of every artifice that has hampered some of her previous work, a mature Julia Roberts (Best Actress Oscar winner for the inane Erin Brockovich , 2000) shines as Anna, bringing a much needed touch of warmth to a role that in a less capable actress’ hands would have come across as a pathetic nonentity. Roberts, in fact, is Closer ’s only performer to fully rise above the screenplay’s shortcomings.

Clive Owen, who played Dan in the original stage production, displays a strong, magnetic screen presence that would have made even Clark Gable shudder. Yet this otherwise capable actor is ultimately unable to transform stagy lines into real-life talk.

Jude Law has a couple of good dramatic moments when he realizes that others can play his game as well as he does, but his attempts to make his immature lover boy charming fall flat. After all, Dan is nothing more than Alfie Elkins ’ obnoxious twin brother – something that makes Alice’s and, particularly, Anna’s infatuation with him seem patently absurd.

Melodramatic tricks, ‘shocking’ banalities

In the final analysis, Mike Nichols and Patrick Marber’s Closer fails for the same reason that its truth-impaired characters fail to connect with one another: The movie keeps us at a distance from its core, focusing instead on melodramatic tricks and “shocking” banalities.

Those looking for a truly fearless take on dysfunctional human relationships may want to skip this Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? redux and check out the original instead.

Closer (2004) movie cast & crew Director: Mike Nichols. Screenplay: Patrick Marber. From his own 1997 play. Cast: Julia Roberts … Anna Jude Law … Dan Natalie Portman … Alice Clive Owen … Larry Nick Hobbs … Taxi Driver Colin Stinton … Customs Officer Cinematography: Stephen Goldblatt. Film Editing: John Bloom, Antonia Van Drimmelen. Producers: Mike Nichols, John Calley, and Cary Brokaw. Production Design: Tim Hatley. Costume Design: Ann Roth. Production Company: Inside Track 2 | Aquarium Productions | Avenue Pictures | Columbia Pictures. Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing. Running Time: 104 min. Country: United States.

Academy Awards

Closer received two Academy Award nominations :

Best Supporting Actress (Natalie Portman).
Best Supporting Actor (Clive Owen).

Though shortlisted in the supporting categories throughout awards season, both Natalie Portman and Clive Owen have about as much screen time as Closer ’s nominal (non-nominated) “leads” Julia Roberts and Jude Law.

Awards & nominations

Closer won numerous awards, including:

British Academy Awards (BAFTAs) : Best Supporting Actor (Clive Owen).
2 Golden Globes : Best Supporting Actor (Clive Owen) and Best Supporting Actress (Natalie Portman).
New York Film Critics Circle : Best Supporting Actor (Clive Owen).
Toronto Film Critics Association : Best Supporting Actor (Clive Owen).
National Board of Review : Best Ensemble (Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Clive Owen, Natalie Portman).
San Diego Film Critics Society: Best Supporting Actress (Natalie Portman).
Las Vegas Film Critics Society : Best Supporting Actor (Clive Owen).

Closer received a number of other nominations, including:

2 additional BAFTA nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Natalie Portman) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Patrick Marber).
3 additional Golden Globe nominations: Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director (Mike Nichols), and Best Screenplay (Patrick Marber).
3 Critics’ Choice Awards : Best Supporting Actress (Natalie Portman), Best Supporting Actor (Clive Owen), Best Acting Ensemble (Jude Law, Clive Owen, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts).

Closer movie credits via the American Film Institute (AFI) Catalog website .

Natalie Portman and Julia Roberts Closer (2004) images: Columbia Pictures.

“ Closer (2004) Movie Review: Dysfunctional Heterosexuals” last updated in March 2024.

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Black swan box office: major natalie portman sleeper hit, eat pray love box office: julia roberts’ international success, ernest lehman (screenwriter): who’s afraid of virginia woolf, dominic cooper + ben whishaw + emma thompson + carey mulligan: london film festival, black swan (2010) movie review: best darren aronofsky, j.k. rowling & colin firth bafta speeches + julia roberts cinematographers honor, leave a comment.

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I feel like this reviewer totally missed the point.

Why do you think the ending is bad?

I thought it was good given Dan’s realization of Alice’s lie about her name. Cutting to her walking on Broadway tells me she’s back in the situation she was when she met eye to eye with Dan in the beginning - almost as if it’s a cyclic process for her. And that she may be the depressive Larry took her for in the conversation with Dan @ his office, after he called her “cold at heart” in the strip club. Quite a lot of significance to me.

First comment in 6 years, srsly? Then again I’ve only just seen the movie.

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"Close," about two small-town Belgian boys who are as tight as brothers, is a devastating movie. But to what end?

I can't say what I mean by that question—not at this point—because "Close" is critic-proof, perhaps discussion-proof, if the reader or listener hasn't already seen it. A pivotal early plot development makes it impossible to discuss at length or in detail, lest the writer be pilloried for "spoilers." And yet to avoid discussing the rest of the movie is to avoid discussing the movie. So all that remains is handing out compliments to the cast (they are superb, no doubt—especially Eden Dambrine and Gustav de Waele as the young friends) and to director-cowriter Lukas Dhont , who imbues the story with a polished naturalist quality that occasionally evokes Terrence Malick (" The Tree of Life " comes to mind often). Let's say at the top of this review that, evaluated purely on a craft level, "Close" is a remarkable film with exquisitely modulated performances and imagery, but that the more distance I got from it, the more I resented how carelessly it handles emotionally explosive material of a type that has traumatized so many real-life families, and the more questions I had about what, exactly, the viewer is supposed to take away from the experience.

Léo (played by Dambrine) and Rémi (played by Waele) both grew up on small farms worked by their families. They ride their bikes to and from school every day, and at the end of a workday, one will often go over to the other's house for dinner and to sleep over. The film's script, by Dhont and his regular collaborator Angelo Tijssens , characterizes the relationship in a way that allows viewers to superimpose their readings; some have seen this as a queer-coded relationship (one or both boys is gay but perhaps haven't consciously realized it yet) while for others, it's about how the innocent, unaffected physicality of younger boys who can share a bed without feeling self-conscious or anxious and can hug, touch, even hold hands in public without feeling disapproving eyes on them, tends to harden and reconfigure itself into cliches of "cool" or seemingly emotionless straight masculinity when they get older, and homophobic classmates conditioned by reactionary parents begin characterizing any display of the earlier behavior as "queer," and therefore unacceptable.

If a schoolteacher wanted to explain the concept of heteronormativity to children (an idea that would not be allowed in most United States public schools today, thanks to reactionary political interference in local districts) they could screen "Close," because the movie lays it all out plainly. However one characterizes or codes it, there's nothing wrong with anything having to do with these boys and their relationship. In any case, it's nobody's business but theirs (and their parents'). The movie treats their affection as pure and even heroic, like something from a 19th-century poem about a love so true that it transcends time, culture, and even flesh. Léo adores Rémi—you can see it in the way he looks at Rémi when the latter is practicing his clarinet or soloing at a school recital—and he also loves how Rémi's family has accepted him as a bonus son. Léo looks at Rémi's mother Sophie ( Émilie Dequenne ) the same way, idealizing and practically worshiping her with his gaze.

Rémi seems to feel the same way about Léo and his family. It's probably not an accident of casting that Léo's big brother, with his dark hair and eyes, looks like he could be a member of Rémi's family. Dhont's filmmaking draws a parallel between the love that Léo and Rémi feel and express for each other and the way their two families seem to blend together both geographically and emotionally (there are two houses, but at times it feels like early part the story is unfolding in one big house). This is love as an eradication of perceived boundaries.

[ Spoilers from here]

Then the usual homophobic social garbage comes into play, with both boys and girls at Léo and Rémi's school asking impertinent and leading questions about their relationship, then escalating to slurs and abuse. Both boys are upset by this, but only Léo begins to alter his behavior as a result, getting in with a new peer group that has organized itself around ice hockey (its leader is a young jock who initiated some of the taunting) and passively rebuffing Rémi's expressions of friendship and closeness.

The film is at its best in this section of the story. Through Dambrine's and de Waele's extraordinarily intuitive and exact performances as much as through the script, we understand that dynamic wherein one person does things that are devastating to someone they love, due to reasons of social pressure, and know deep down that it's wrong to do it, but keep doing it anyway, and refuse to give explanations when the injured party asks for them because explaining would require justification. There's no way to justify that kind of selfish meanness.

Rémi's pain at being rejected by Léo is intense, particularly after a night where Léo gets self-conscious sleeping in the same bed with him and takes a mattress by himself on the floor. The public expression of Rémi's hurt looks to outsiders like that of a spurned lover, and on some deep level that might be what it is; but these boys are both barely sexual, and not conversant in such terminology, so all they can do is feel.

And then, as you've probably already gathered from the ominous but vague warnings at the top and the spoiler warning two paragraphs above this one, Rémi kills himself about a third of the way through the story. The rest of "Close" is about the two families and the community reacting to this awful event.

And it's here that the movie started to lose me even as I continued to admire its performances, direction, and overall sense of craft.

I haven't seen too many films about grief that so keenly capture that feeling right after a catastrophic loss where everyone close to the deceased is wandering around looking like they've just climbed out of a wrecked car, and spending inordinate amounts of time sitting and staring at nothing in particular. The "life goes on anyway" scenes are strong as well, especially the scenes of Léo growing close to the hockey players who become his friends even though their cruelty helped spark this catastrophe (this is an unhealthy thing that happens in life, unfortunately—sometimes the people who helped cause your grief are the ones who comfort you afterward).

Even more affecting are scenes of Rémi's mother Sophie seeming to be drawn to Léo, and he to her, in the aftermath—as if she's realizing that he could be a son to her, a partial consolation for an irreplaceable loss, and her a mother to him. The horror and shock following the loss of a child isn't something that popular art dares to examine close up with any regularity. Dead children are more often referred to in past tense or used as plot devices (the thing that isn't talked about until characters finally talk about it). So it's admirable, in a way, that "Close" decided to go where it went.

But what does it find and show once it has gone there? That's the question I have no good answer to.

This is, when you get down to it, the story of a horrible thing that happened, that nobody who actually helped cause it can understand (or shows any sign of even wanting to understand), that no one in the dead boy's immediate circle saw coming or could have prevented, and that smashes two families' understanding of themselves to pieces. And it leaves poor Léo carrying around an unimaginable and (for him) mystifying burden: he feels like this is all his fault, even though it isn't. The movie generates suspense by making us wonder when Léo is finally going to tell Sophie that (in his mind) he caused her loss. It finally happens in the last ten minutes of the story, and the dead boy's family immediately leaves town, and the film ends with poor Léo looking into their now-empty house.

What are we left with, at that point, except the knowledge that this boy is going to feel this for the rest of his life as if through caused the suicide of his best friend and shattered his family? Is there anything else attached to that takeaway beyond a trite formulation like "homophobia is bad, don't do it"? The director is great at punching audiences in the gut, yes. But there should be more than the punch, the exhalation of breath, and the realization that one has just been punched. And, to nitpick a bit, is it really possible that Sophie (and the rest of that family) would not have put two and two together and figured out that the most likely trigger for Rémi's impulsive act was his public rejection by the boy he treated as a soulmate?

As focused and controlled as every scene in "Close" is, it feels, in a way, calculated and almost cruel. It could be a reminiscence made many years after the tragedy by one of the boys who tormented Rémi and Léo—except that one would hope that if one of those kids grew up and made a movie like this one, it would not be quite so clinical in its examination of awful things happening to people who did nothing to deserve it; and that it would go deeper into Léo's story, and show how he did or did not come to understand what actually happened, rather than leaving us with what feels like the start of another movie, one that we may never get to see.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film Credits

Close (2023)

Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving suicide and brief strong language.

104 minutes

Eden Dambrine as Léo

Gustav De Waele as Rémi

Émilie Dequenne as Sophie

Léa Drucker as Nathalie

Igor van Dessel as Charlie

Kevin Janssens as Peter

Marc Weiss as Yves

Lukas Dhont
Angelo Tijssens

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Frank van den Eeden
Alain Dessauvage
Valentin Hadjadj

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Closer movie review & film summary (2004)
A movie about four people who play at sincere, truthful relationships while lying about their pasts and present. The reviewer praises the film for its gender wars on a whole new level, its smart and articulate characters, and its creepy fascination. The film stars Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman.
Closer
Feb 15, 2021. Rated: 3/4 • Apr 6, 2020. Jan 18, 2020. Alice (Natalie Portman), an American stripper who has moved to London, meets Dan (Jude Law) on the street. While looking at him, a taxi hits ...
The Movie Review: 'Closer'
Closer, released on video today, is not a bad movie--or rather it is not merely bad. It's flamboyantly bad, bad in a way that can't help but be fascinating and even entertaining. It's well-enough ...
When Talk Is Sexier Than a Clichéd Clinch
Like most interesting movies about sex, ''Closer,'' Mike Nichols's deft film adaptation of a well-known play by Patrick Marber, is mostly talk. There are still a few filmmakers -- not all of them ...
Closer
The movie is like a comedy someone dipped in a solvent. Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jun 4, 2014. Searing story of betrayal isn't for kids. Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 22 ...
Closer (film)
Closer is a 2004 American romantic drama directed and produced by Mike Nichols and written by Patrick Marber, based on his award-winning 1997 play of the same name.It stars Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen.The film, like the play on which it is based, has been seen by some as a modern and tragic version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1790 opera Così fan tutte, with ...
Closer (2004)
Review: Closer is a respectable effort. The film had a lot of potential, but failed in so many ways. Closer can be seen as the anti-date movie. It's hard to like the characters, and even harder to like their actions. Even so, it paints a picture so close to reality. A controversy revolving Closer was the sexual content.
Closer
Summary A bitingly funny and honest look at modern relationships, Closer is the story of four strangers -- their chance meetings, instant attractions and casual betrayals. (Sony Pictures) Drama. Romance. Directed By: Mike Nichols.
Closer
Movie Review. This brutal look at love and relationships as they occur naturally in the wild—without the benefit of moral structure or even basic common sense—uses London as its dreary backdrop. ... Closer comes very close to proving His point: that a monogamous, persevering commitment to marriage is the only way it works. Twice, characters ...
Review: Mike Nichols 'Closer' : NPR
Film critic David Edelstein reviews Closer, starring Jude Law and Natalie Portman, and directed by Mike Nichols.
Why Closer Still Matters Two Decades After Its Release
In the mid-2000s, when adult dramas still reigned supreme, director Mike Nichols decided to adapt another play. Back in 1966, he began his career as a Hollywood director with a critically acclaimed adaptation of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"In the time since, he had adapted multiple books, ranging from Charles Webb's "The Graduate" to the Carrie Fisher memoir ...
Closer
Hooray for Hollywood—um, Broadway.Closer is just the first of three plays to jump to the silver screen this winter. On December 24, John Madden's adaptation of David Auburn's Tony-winning ...
Is 'Closer' Actually Good or Do We Just Love Natalie ...
Closer. The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other. Actors. Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen ...
Closer
Closer (United States, 2004) A movie review by James Berardinelli. If you pay attention to Hollywood's romantic comedies, the interaction between men and women is all about love and companionship. If you instead rely upon the philosophy of Closer, it's all about power. Closer starts like a nice romantic drama, with a couple of "meet cutes" (as ...
Closer Movie Review
Kids say ( 2 ): This film is more clever than wise. Those who have been angered and betrayed by love might find it validating, but that does not make it insightful. The characters toss around the l-word a great deal, but there is no evidence that any of them even see each other, much less know or love each other.
Closer Review
Closer Review. Dan helps Alice after a minor accident. After using her in his novel, he's photographed by Anna. Through an internet prank, Dan gets Anna together with Larry, before Larry finds ...
Closer Review
Closer Review. By Brian Rentschler ... Overall, I mildly enjoyed Closer, but the movie is an exercise in frustration to watch, as I'll explain. The story is set in London, and it starts out with Dan (played by Jude Law) and Alice (played by Natalie Portman) seeing each other from across a crowded street. Before Dan can introduce himself, though ...
The Ending Of Closer Explained
2004's "Closer" is all about relationships and has some truly hilarious moments, but it's basically the opposite of a romantic comedy. Dan ( Jude Law ), Alice ( Natalie Portman ), Anna ( Julia ...
Closer (2004) Movie Review: Dysfunctional Heterosexuals
Closer (2004) movie review summary: In this proudly artificial psychological drama, veteran director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Patrick Marber, adapting his own play, attempt to recreate the dysfunctional universe of heterosexual relationships previously seen - in more profound fashion - in Nichols' own Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.; In the four-pronged cast, Julia Roberts is the ...
Closer
Closer (2004) Starring Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Clive Owen, and Julia Roberts! By far one of the best romance dramas out there and there's alot of reasons ...
Closer (2004)
Alice/Jane is a gorgeous young runaway from New York's seedy sex industry; she soon pairs up with Dan, a thoughtful but unsuccessful novelist and journalist, who authors a book about her. Anna is a quietly independent divorce and successful photographer. After Dan makes a move on her during a photo session for the book, she rejects Dan, who ...
Closer (film)
Closer is a 2004 American romantic drama film directed and produced by Mike Nichols and written by Patrick Marber, based on his award-winning 1997 play of the same name. It stars Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen. The film, like the play on which it is based, has been seen by some as a modern and tragic version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1790 opera Così fan tutte ...
Close movie review & film summary (2023)
There's no way to justify that kind of selfish meanness. Rémi's pain at being rejected by Léo is intense, particularly after a night where Léo gets self-conscious sleeping in the same bed with him and takes a mattress by himself on the floor. The public expression of Rémi's hurt looks to outsiders like that of a spurned lover, and on some ...
Crossing (2024)
Crossing: Directed by Levan Akin. With Mzia Arabuli, Lucas Kankava, Deniz Dumanli. Lia, a retired teacher, has promised to find her long-lost niece, Tekla. Her search takes her to Istanbul where she meets Evrim, a lawyer fighting for trans rights, and Tekla starts to feel closer than ever.
‎Rino : Movies & Cinema Swiper on the App Store
Download Rino : Movies & Cinema Swiper and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. ‎Dive into the cinema world with a new way to discover, explore, and manage your entertainment preferences. Our app offers a unique cinematic discovery experience, where every swipe becomes an exciting adventure, bringing you closer to the movies and tv ...

The Movie Review: 'Closer'

When Talk Is Sexier Than a Clichéd Clinch

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Closer (United States, 2004)

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This movie was better than I thought it would be, but the characters are such idiots that I found it hard to enjoy the movie more than just marginally.

The Ending Of Closer Explained

What you need to remember about the plot of Closer

What happens at the end of Closer?

Does the ending of the play differ from the movie?

Why does Dan introduce Anna to Larry?

Why did Anna and Larry get back together?

What lessons were learned?

Why did Alice lie to Dan about her name?

What will Alice do now?

What has the cast and crew said about Closer?

Closer (2004) Movie Review: Dysfunctional Heterosexuals

Closer (2004) movie review: Mike Nichols’ latest take on dysfunctional hetero couples is no Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Closer plot: Edward Albee vs. Patrick Marber

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