Reviewed by Robyn Ludwig

If you enjoy watching beautiful people do ugly things to each other, then snuggle up with a big bucket of popcorn for Closer. Getting top billing in an all-star cast is Jude Law - hot off his failure to recreate the legendary Alfie - as obituary writer turned aspiring novelist Dan.  Bland unexciting Dan is living a humdrum life, when a random encounter with an ex-stripper from New York named Alice (Portman) on a crowded street corner in London kick starts a twisted and ultimately doomed love affair.  Their seemingly-uncomplicated relationship spins off into a perverse love-square involving a photographer named Anna - played by a frumpy-looking Julia Roberts, who as usual never makes us forget for one second that she is Julia Roberts.  The fourth corner in this demented co-dependent rivalry is Clive Owen, who has built up a solid reputation for playing repugnant miscreants, now occupying the role of repulsive, detestable dermatologist Larry. Vengeful jockeying for power, petty mind-games, and inexplicable bed-hopping transpire over a period of four years, with each character taking turns partner-swapping, getting dumped, confronting their cheating lover with vicious verbal attacks, breaking down in remorseful tears, taking back their rejected ex out of pity or desperation, and then switching it up all over again. 

Among its many flaws, Closer features disorienting leaps in time, punctuated by nothing more than a changing hairstyle, and the film relies on an increasingly implausible series of coincidences and baffling decisions to reach its pointless end point.  With a distasteful undercurrent of misogyny, the film is also a throwback to a cinematic era that saw stupid women make stupid decisions to be with a stupid man.  The nastiest woman-basher is the character of Larry, who spends most of the film cursing out women as bitches and whores, and frequently uses a certain four-letter word that is too unpleasant to repeat.  One scene in which a distraught Larry runs into Alice in a strip club is so sickeningly skin-crawling that Director Mike Nichols and Writer Patrick Marber both deserve to be permanently ostracized by the entire female population. The individual performances may be strong, but the rapid-fire obscenities, the acidic dialogue, which more often approaches howl-inducing, and the manipulative ugliness of the characters, make Closer disengaging and unbearable to watch. Think of the classic Virginia Woolf, with all the pain and discomfort of watching four people turn each other into emotional punching bags, without the reward of a better understanding of the complexities of deception, betrayal, and forgiveness.