Closer (15, 103 mins) Stars Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen Director: Mike Nichols
RELATIONSHIPS are a messy business; painfully so in Mike Nichols's elegant and eloquent film version of Patrick Marber's award-winning stage play, adapted for the screen by the writer himself.
Love affairs, forged in the white heat of lust, are extinguished just as quickly by a fleeting glance from a beautiful stranger.
And the act of falling in love - that sickening leap of faith, of surrendering entirely to another person - is much more exhilarating and satisfying than actually being in love.
Dan (Law), who co-writes the obituaries column for a major London newspaper, happens to meet stripper Alice (Portman), when she is almost run over crossing the street.
The pair strike up a flirtatious repartee. They soon become a couple and Dan translates his experiences with the pretty American into a novel.
During the shoot for the image on the book jacket, Dan finds himself attracted to the photographer, Anna (Roberts), also an American, who rebuffs his advances.
A trick played by Dan then brings Anna together with Larry (Owen), a dermatologist in one of the capital's overrun hospitals, who becomes her boyfriend.
The sexual charge between Anna and Dan proves too great however, setting in motion a chain of events which sees these four characters continually cross paths, and rebound in unexpected directions.
Closer is a film in which all of the fireworks are verbal.
