MOVIE REVIEW: CLOSER (2004)

BETRAYAL, DECEPTION, LIES.

SOUNDS LIKE A PLOT FULL OF ACTION PACKED

MUSCLE MAN JUMPING FROM SKYSCRAPERS 

ERGO, A MOVIE STARRING

MATT DAMON OR TOM CRUISE. 

But what if all of these 
synonymously 

depicts love in its 
purest and coldest form?

Will the betrayal be worth it?

Will deception lead everyone

to happiness?

Will the lies uncover 
something 

more pressing than the truth? 

Closer, a film by Mike Nichols 

examines the birth of love between

two opposing characters,

Alice (Natalie Portman)

and Dan (Jude Law) in a sudden haze

of fate twining them together in London. 

It then shifts the audiences' attention to a beautiful, 

mysterious yet easy going photographer,

Anna (Julia Roberts) whom 

captivated the eye of Dan,

now a novelist publishing

his first book mirroring Alice's 

needy yet quirky nature.

Falling madly for Anna while
still living with Alice,
A sensual yet odd side of the meek Dan,
was then revealed 
and without him knowing and
intending to do so,
he played cupid.

His peculiar step introduced 
Anna to Larry (Clive Owen),
a dermatologist and also
whom she was eventually married. 



A forlorn Dan preceded to continue
wooing Anna and eventually,
the two had an affair.
This tangles the lives of the other
two lovers left in the dusk of their relationships.

The question is who then will be happy?

Closer encapsulated the
worthy, needless and unbiased
face of love, lust, and seduction
in an unnerving sequence
that never falters 
the audience to
examine which character
resembles them.

A seemingly mute eroticism
in motion
captured in the witty lines 
of every character,
enables 
one to picture how 
complicated it is to
love and be loved in return. 

{PS. if you are familiar with the panic at the disco songs:

"Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking 

Her Clothes Off" & "But it's better if you do",

it is taken from the lines 

Natalie Portman's character Alice uttered 

during a scene with Larry (Clive Owen). }