Closer - R
Common Sense Note
Parents should know that this movie is filled with extremely adult material, with exceptionally explicit sexual references, including adultery and oral sex. There are scenes in a strip club. Characters drink, smoke, and use very strong, explicit, and graphic language. There are tense and upsetting scenes of jealousy, anger, and betrayal.
Families who see this movie could talk about what the characters were really looking for. What did playwright/screenwriter Patrick Marber want to show us with the occupations of the four characters? What do we learn from the name on Alice's passport? Were Dan and Anna using Alice by writing the novel and taking her photo?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Nell Minow
With an anguished wail, Larry (Clive Owen) asks where he can find intimacy. In a private room in a strip club, where the rules say that you can look, but not touch. The stripper's ex-boyfriend is now romantically involved with Larry's ex-wife, Anna (Julia Roberts). Does he really want intimacy or does he want revenge? Or does he just want the stripper to bend over and touch the floor?
Probably all of the above. This is a searing story of hurt and betrayal with two couples who reach for each other in almost every combination. They may get, as in the movie's title CLOSER, but do they ever really get close?
Larry is a dermatologist. Anna is a photographer. Alice (Natalie Portman) is a stripper turned waitress turned stripper again. And Dan (Jude Law) is an obituary writer who has written a novel.
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 main 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.
Both female characters are somewhere between a fantasy and a narrative convenience. Their only function is to drive the men crazy. The center of the movie is the relationship between the two men. In a scene added for the movie, Larry and Dan send instant messages to each other in an anonymous sex chat room, Dan pretending to be a woman. Their connections with the women in their lives have more to do with the struggle between them over power and territory than with knowing or caring for Anna and Alice. Larry demands to know Alice's real name, but neither he nor Dan ask her for any details about her past or preferences or aspirations.
Portman is dazzling to watch. Owen and Law do well (those who saw Law cry in the very different I Heart Huckabees will see his range when Dan cries here). But this is not the best use of Roberts' considerable talents; it may be that Nichols was relying more on the shock value of hearing America's sweetheart speak about oral sex in explicit terms than on her ability to convey a superficially conceived character.
Parents should know that this movie is filled with extremely adult material, with exceptionally explicit sexual references, including adultery and oral sex. There are scenes in a strip club. Characters drink, smoke, and use very strong, explicit, and graphic language. There are tense and upsetting scenes of jealousy, anger, and betrayal.
Families who see this movie could talk about what the characters were really looking for. What did playwright/screenwriter Patrick Marber want to show us with the occupations of the four characters? What do we learn from the name on Alice's passport? Were Dan and Anna using Alice by writing the novel and taking her photo?
Families who appreciate this movie may also like Carnal Knowledge, also directed by Nichols, and Dangerous Liaisons and Valmont, two different movie versions of the epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentExtremely explicit sexual references and situations, strip club. |
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ViolenceIntense emotional confrontations, slap. |
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LanguageExtremely strong language. |
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Social BehaviorNone of the characters act very honorably. |
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Commercialism |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoDrinking and smoking. |
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