Closer

Released: 2004
Drama
Starring: Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Clive Owen, and Julia Roberts
Director: Mike Nichols
Running Time: 104 minutes
Rated R (as it should be - it's not for kids)


The breakdown:  The movie follows 4 people, who start out as 2 couples, but things get sticky when couples start breaking up and they start changing partners.


This is a complicated relationship movie.  It's a terrible romantic film if that's what you're looking for, but it's a very strong character study. 
I'll try to break it down by couples and how they intersect.
Dan and Alice are together.  They meet purely by accident.  Literally, Alice is hit by a car and Dan takes her to the hospital.  Dan is an English journalist and Alice is an American passing through England working as a waitress, or any other job she can get including things like stripping.
Alice is much younger than Dan and I think that works against him.  She's a free spirit in some sense but also a bit needy of love.  Dan's a bit indecisive.  They move in together and are "in love".

Then there's Anna, who's a photographer.
So Dan writes a book about Alice and hires Anna to do the photo for the book jacket.  Dan is attracted to Anna and comes onto her.  She's been divorced before and rejects his advances.  Dan is looking for revenge and tricks Anna into meeting a sex-addicted stranger through the internet.  Fate would have it that Anna finds this guy, named Larry very interesting.  Larry is a dermatologist and very successful.  Dan finds out and is beside himself that not only did he not get revenge, but that he set Anna up with a guy who she ends up marrying!
Although already married, Anna starts an affair with Dan (who's also still with Alice) and eventually relationships start to break apart.  Dan can't decide between Alice and Anna.  Anna can't seem to stay with one guy either.  They all hurt each other and huge amounts of damage are done to everyone involved.  There is a lot of tension between Dan and Larry when they come face to face, as well as with Alice and Anna.  The strongest scene is when Larry finds out that Anna has been cheating on him.  High drama and very vicious and realistic, I'd say.

I give it 4 1/2 out of 5 ticket stubs for strong acting, a great realistic script, and a LOT of drama.  If you love character studies this one is for you.