Closer is going to make for some excellent scene studies for acting classes in the future, if it hasn't already. Patrick Marber's 1997 play, as adapted for the screen by director Mike Nichols, is a series of discrete scenes played out always between two characters, each with a distinct emotional core and narrative arc. Although the film revolves around four central characters, they are never all in the same scene, and only once, briefly, are three of them together. Closer unfolds like a series of skits, each with a specific mission that plays out in Marber's mannered dialogue and caustic characterization. The end result is an excellent series of scenes that don't quite make a movie.
One can imagine Closer failing spectacularly on stage without the right actors, since Marber's story of toxic relationships between and among two couples centers on unlikable people doing increasingly unlikable things, speaking and acting in a heightened, hyper-real way where every emotional exchange has the potential to create or destroy a relationship. Luckily, Nichols has cast eminently capable players who elevate the material beyond its cold, precise cynicism and thrive under his minimalist direction.
It's even more lucky that within the confines of Marber's acting-class-exercise writing, these actors rarely take their performances over the top. It's hard to pick a stand-out among the four main players, but if pressed, I'd say that Natalie Portman, as stripper/waitress Alice, a young American overwhelmed by her journey to London, shines the brightest, if only because her performances here and in Garden State a few months ago fully cement her transformation from promising child actress to full-blown adult powerhouse.
Fresh off the plane from New York, Alice steps into the path of a London taxi and suffers minor injuries, tended to by a kind stranger, obituary writer Dan (Jude Law). The first of Closer's playlets is its sweetest—and the only one unsullied by deception and malice (or so it first appears)—as we witness the tentative steps of Dan and Alice toward love. It could be the opening to a romantic comedy, except as soon as it's established that Dan and Alice have made a connection, we jump forward a few months to Dan, now a budding novelist, having his book-jacket photo taken by another American, photographer Anna (Julia Roberts).
By this time, Dan and Alice are living together, and Dan has based his novel on details from Alice's life, but that doesn't stop him from shamelessly seducing the about-to-be-divorced Anna. The rest of the film follows the same structure: Marber establishes the beginning or end of a relationship between two of the characters, and then jumps ahead months or years to the beginning turning into an ending or vice versa. It's an effective narrative device, but it's also maddeningly distancing; characters profess love for one another but we never see that love manifest. Instead, all we see is bitterness, recriminations and depression, as Marber paints his portrait of romantic love: cold, empty, devastating.
The fourth member of the misery quartet is dermatologist Larry (Clive Owen), who meets Anna via a painfully awkward plot device, as Dan, posing as Anna in a chat room, invites Larry out for some hot, anonymous sex. Anna and Larry hit it off romantically instead, but Dan is in love with Anna, Anna is in love with Dan, Larry is later in love with Alice, and Marber is clearly in love with the sound of his own words.
This all sounds harder to bear than it actually is, thanks to the film's smooth narrative flow, and the four lead actors selling Marber's too-clever dialogue as genuine and heartfelt. The time-jumps, which feel forced at first, soon take on a hypnotic quality, as you can't wait to see how these people will screw up their lives next, or who will be sleeping with whom. Nichols keeps things simple, shooting in airy, modern spaces that emphasize the mechanistic distance between his characters, but using judicious close-ups to let us see the real emotions that come out of engaging in what Alice at one point glibly denies is a war.
If the interactions feel real and insightful as you watch them, they fall apart a bit on further reflection, as it's easy to see past the cynicism and explicit language to an empty core of people who don't exist outside of their desires to hurt one another. It's to the cast's credit that they make Marber's script seem real in the moment, and to Nichols for coaxing such strong performances out of them, especially Roberts, who really ventures far from her typical charming goofball roles. There's plenty of bite to Closer on a microscopic level, but when you pull back, there's just not much holding it together.