Starring: Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Clive Owen, Julia Roberts

6 out of 10 stars

There comes a point in almost every icky-relationship movie when you have to ask yourself the question, "Why exactly am I watching this?" Unfortunately, for the movie Closer, this question comes up sooner rather than later, despite some fine performances, sharp dialogue, and what's easily Mike Nichols' best directorial outing in years. A sour yet mordantly humorous sexual roundelay featuring four attractive, scheming adults in London, Closer wants to be Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for the 21st century, or at least Carnal Knowledge. The fact that it evokes those previous Nichols movies (from 1966 and 1971, respectively) is absolutely no accident, as Nichols seems to be attempting a kind of hybrid of those two films, down to the four-character structure, constant one-upmanship and subterranean exploration of sexual congress. But on its way to marrying both, Closer dilutes its power by aiming for the brain and the groin simultaneously; as a result, it entirely misses the heart.

Adapted by Patrick Marber from his 1997 play, Closer starts out promisingly with dueling long shots of stars Jude Law and Natalie Portman walking towards each other on a crowded street in an idyllic reverie. After she, the American Alice, is hit by a taxi when crossing the street, he, the British Dan, rushes to her side, where she murmurs, "Hello, stranger." It's sweet, it's cute, it's romantic, it fills your heart with warm happy feelings. Flirtation in a hospital waiting room only makes your la-la giddiness grow, but Nichols and Marber have a few tricks up their sleeve, including a sudden wide shot revealing Portman's bloody leg, a nice bit of foreshadowing of the hurt yet to come. And within all the charming, clever dialogue, you almost forget the fact that each is already in a relationship.

Flash forward an indeterminate amount of time: Dan is posing for a book jacket photo, having gone from struggling, frumpy obit writer to cocky, self-confident aspiring novelist – and a full-on narcissist. The woman shooting him, Anna (Julia Roberts), is one also, and both are so self-confident you can feel the sensual clash of their egos; two self-adoring souls have found each other. Tension gives way to passion, and a shared kiss is broken only by the fact that Dan finally reveals Alice is his live-in girlfriend. Anna, in a show of supposed honor that's really more of a demonstration of her superior game-playing skills, rebuffs him from going any further. It's a more sinister introduction to romance – this is forbidden love, and the two people in this scenario are getting off just as much on deception as the feelings involved.

If Closer's first two scenes are varying spins on the meet-cute, its third is a total debasement of what we consider to be organic, innocent romance, as doctor Larry (Clive Owen) finds himself in a sex chat room conversing with a hot, horny woman who, in reality, is Dan himself. Though hardly plausible, the root of Dan's game soon becomes apparent – he's pretending to be Anna, caught in the full flush of obsession. Larry, thinking he's hit the jackpot of sexual satisfaction, arranges a meeting; Dan sends him to an aquarium, a place he knows to be one of Anna's favorite haunts. And what do you know, Anna is really there when Larry shows up. It's awkward, embarrassing, absurd, but turned on by the sheer audacity of it all, Anna and Larry pursue a romance.

It's all downhill from there, in both a moral and romantic sense, as once all the players in this game are set in motion, Marber constructs various scenes out of their lives that pair them again and again in various permutations of passion, heartbreak, anger, sadness, vengeance, pleading, deception, and most importantly, brutal honesty. That honesty is the movie's driving force, for if Closer has anything new to show, it's the sado-masochistic nature of relationships that thrive on the ebb and flow of hurt and rejection. Closer wallows in hurtful truth—and its characters love the misery it brings; they're people who live to torture and be tortured, and each gets to play victim and victimizer more than once. Dan positively glows in pursuing and being rebuffed by Anna; Alice's insecurities in her relationship take on a life of their own; Anna holds her self-torture so close it seems like a best friend; and Larry, poor Larry, brings his shortcomings to Anna like a present of misery, his eyes positively gleaming at the anticipation of her insults and scathing disdain.

Sounds like a real upper, doesn't it? It's a testament to Marber, Nichols, and the cast that this feeling only seeps into you somewhat slowly, as the cleverness of the dialogue, Nichols' adroit staging, and the acting of the cast distract you from the fact that, basically, you are watching the ickiest, grossest, most dysfunctional parts of all your past relationships being strung together in one movie. Marber's dialogue and construction work nicely, but only up to a point, and after a while the staginess of the dialogue makes you realize that not only are the characters trying to impress one another, the script as a whole is desperate to impress you too. After the largeness of scale of Angels in America, Nichols snaps back into sharp focus on his four actors, but either he can't, or is reluctant to, peel back the layers to show us their repellent yet fascinating subconscious, as he did so amazingly with Elizabeth Taylor in Virginia Woolf and Jack Nicholson in Carnal Knowledge.

With Marber focusing on the schematics of the script and Nichols coolly observing it all like a wildlife documentary, it falls to the four actors to draw us in deeper into the movie; all succeed relatively, but only Law and Owen seem to be on equal ground. Portman falters in showing Alice's love and insecurity, but when she puts on an almost plastic-like smile and pink wig in a strip club, she comes alive with a jocular insincerity that visibly tortures Larry, who has stumbled upon her after wallowing in post-breakup misery. Roberts does well by an underwritten character – Anna is so motiveless as to be almost opaque – and succeeds by being almost perfectly cast; if you wanted an actress who cloaks her self-pleasure in seeming humility, you couldn't do better than her.

Law proves that yet again he's most adept at playing charming, amoral characters with manipulative streaks (as he did in The Talented Mr. Ripley), and Dan, with his corrosive use of his looks and charm, is the true cad his Alfie should have been. It's Owen, though, whose Larry goes from being the sexiest masochist ever to a hard-core sadist, who's by far the best of the lot, and his forced deconstruction of a past affair by Anna is by turns heartbreaking, chilling, and fascinating. Owen is the one most turned on by the energy inherent in the destructive relationships – whether he's on the giving or receiving end – and Larry is the one character you want to follow through to the end. But ultimately, for all that energy that Closer creates, it doesn't seem in the service of anything new.