Another clinical dissection of love and romance from Mike Nichols, the general of the gender wars. Four attractive Londoners (two Brits, Jude Law and Clive Owen, and two Americans, Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman), all smart, beautiful and cuttingly articulate, screw each other over while lying about love, sex and intimacy with a straight face.
“Lying’s the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off — but it’s better if you do,” notes Portman, a stripper with a heart of gold, who is only pretending to bare all for her lover.
Everyone is pretending here, even Nichols, who gives us plausible versions of the rom-com staples: meet-cute flirtation at an aquarium; a chat room seduction, supposedly sincere declaration of love. But desire is soon turned into leverage, and fidelity becomes a bargaining chip in a game of deception masquerading as openness.
Closer dismantles the rom-com fantasy that honesty is cleansing. Here, honesty is cruelty sharpened to a point. By the time the final pairing settles, no one has evolved — they’ve merely rotated positions in the same power game. Love, in this universe, is less destiny than strategic advantage.
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