It’s a long holiday weekend to celebrate the Feast of Saints and the Dead and what better day to stave off boredom than to have a movie marathon!!! But alas the DVD player inside the room won’t play almost all the DVDs I brought only the Julia Roberts collection played and since there wasn’t any remote I had no choice but to watch the first movie in the collection – a movie called Closer. It was topbilled by Julia Roberts but it felt more like Natalie Portman’s movie to me because she had more meaty parts in the film. But if there was one word I could use to describe the movie, it would be – weird! The storyline was a bit confusing since at first I thought I was watching a flashback but it turned out to be the ending of the film, now I’m really confused?!?
Let me start at the beginning, the movie starts with Jude Law and Natalie walking opposite each other across a busy London street. They gaze and smile until Natalie gets hit by a car. Jude Law (Dan) takes her to the hospital where they get to know each other. They ride on a bus where Dan reveals he is an obit writer and Natalie (Alice) says she is a stripper from New York who left to escape a bad relationship. They separate upon reaching Dan’s workplace.
Next scene shows them one year later – Dan and Alice are already a couple and Dan is shown having his picture taken by Julia Roberts (Anna) a photographer, for his recently published book’s dust jacket. Dan kisses her but tells her that he has a girlfriend. So Anna decides to stop whatever was ‘starting’ between them. Then, Dan’s girlfriend Alice arrives and she asks Anna to take her picture. Dan goes down to leave the two of them alone and Alice reveals that she heard what happened between them thru the intercom downstairs. Anna apologizes but Alice turns away with tears in her eyes.
Next, Dan is shown in his computer in a sex chat room, pretending to be a girl. He meets a man on the web named Larry (Clive Owen) He’s a dermatologist and also a sex addict and they began exchanging ‘hot messages’ with each other. They agree to meet the next day at the aquarium and Dan told Larry to look for Anna. Coincidentally, Anna is there at the aquarium, and they soon realize they have been played with but still they hit it off and begin to date.
Four months later, the two couples meet again during Anna’s photo exhibit. Alice and Larry meet for the first time and flirt mildly until Alice learns that Larry and Anna are dating. Larry and Anna reveal that they call Dan their cupid because it was through him that they met at the aquarium. Dan leaves Alice in a taxicab to go to his father’s funeral but in fact, returns to the exhibit to talk to Anna.
Next scene shows Dan and Alice one year later. Dan says he has been on a business trip but later on admits he had been seeing Anna since the art exhibit and that they have been having an affair. At about the same time, Larry comes home to Anna after a business trip (they are married now) and he confesses that he slept with a prostitute during his trip. She says it’s OK and admits her affair too with Dan.
Six months later, Larry walks into a strip club and sees Alice. He gets into a VIP room with her and she plays a part saying her name is Jane Jones. He admits his frustration with the divorce proceedings from Anna and tries to sleep with Alice but she won’t let him. Next scene shows Anna rushing to meet Dan at a concert. She was late because she met earlier with Larry to get him to sign the divorce papers. Dan guessed that she slept with Larry just to get his signature and she regretfully admitted doing so because it was his condition before signing. Dan becomes upset and they get into an argument.
A few more months later, Dan is seen storming into Larry’s clinic angry because Anna has left him to go back to Larry. Larry reveals to him that Anna is a depression junkie and never really filed the divorce papers. He felt pity for the poor guy however, so he reveals where Alice is but at the same time he tells her that he also slept with her. Dan goes to the strip club, sees Alice and they get back together again. Next, Alice and Dan are shown at a hotel room near Heathrow Airport. They are quite happy and are on their way to New York. Dan started to question her, however, if she slept with Larry and at first she said no. But Dan kept on insisting that she tell the truth and when she finally did admit it, she says that she has stopped loving him already. Dan admits he has known all along and has forgiven her already but Alice refused to re-consider. She’s fed up and tells him to leave.
Dan remains in London and passes by the park where he took Alice the first time they met. He notices that one of the names on the wall is Alice Ayres, the same name that Alice told him. Meanwhile, at Heathrow airport, Alice is going through immigration, when she hands in her passport it shown that her name is Jane Jones – the name she gave Larry. Alice/Jane is then seen walking out into the busy street, reminiscent of the opening scene, where she faces an uncertain future… alone.
So there, what do you make of it??? Kinda weird, huh? Because it never really reveals the truth - is her name really Alice? Or Jane? And what’s behind her hiding under different names. The story in a nutshell is about betrayal – how they use sex to hurt the other partner which makes their values quite disturbing. It’s an unconventional story that makes you hate the characters instead of love them. Besides, it’s really about Natalie and not Julia, right? Oh well, why bother, suffice it to say that I felt disturbed by the movie and wouldn’t want to watch something like it again.
[photo grabbed from IMDB]
