CLOSER (2005)

If Mike Nichols’ high esteem in tackling serious dramatic material remains largely inexplicable, he’s always excelled at polishing fashionable third-tier ‘literary’ material. That makes him a good match for Patrick Marber ’s adaptation of his own ‘daring’ play. (We're supposed to gasp at the ‘frank’ sex talk spilling out of the biggest of stars.) But this sub-Strindbergian sexual roundelay between four excruciatingly boring/stupid people (Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman & Clive Owen) plays out like a series of fetid meet-cutes between strangers. (This is, no doubt, the point, but still . . . ) Nichols prominently uses the same rapturous trio from Mozart’s COSI FAN TUTTE that John Schlesinger memorably used in SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY/'71. But in the earlier film it reflected & commented on the film's dramatic situation, here it’s just tony background filler borrowed to give the flirtations a classy backdrop; the Nichols style in a nutshell. And when will Roberts realize that denying us ‘the smile’ does not, in and of itself, constitute serious acting?