Closer

Mike Nichols' Closer is opening on fewer than 500 screens today, but it is touching off widespread critical debate. A.O. Scott in the New York Times hails Nichols as one of the few filmmakers ?who are capable of infusing the bodily expressions of erotic desire with dramatic force and psychological meaning.? Weslie Morris in the Boston Globe remarks that ?it's a show of the director's goodness that a movie fundamentally preoccupied with interpersonal ugliness is allowed to end on a convincing note of beauty.? Bob Longino in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes the movie as ?compelling, unsettling and finely acted.? Peter Howell, in the Toronto Star calls it ?a Nichols signature movie, one of his best in a long career and of a piece with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Carnal Knowledge.? On the other hand, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times concludes that what the film ?lacks is a compelling reason to see it. Despite involved acting from Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen and Nichols' impeccable professionalism as a director, the end result is, to quote one of the characters, 'a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully.'? Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News remarks that while the actors are all ?terrific,? the movie ?still manages to be unpleasant.? John Anderson in Newsday remarks that the movie winds up being a case of ?bad Pinter meets bad Updike, dancing to the rat-a-tat rhythms of an E.R. episode.? Similarly, Joe Morgenstern writes in the Wall Street Journal: ?The movie is insistently playlike, if rarely playful, thanks to the director's fondness for artificial, rat-a-tat-tat rhythms of speech that sound like parodies of drawing-room comedy.? Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News comments that the film ?offers only intermittent satisfaction.? And Philip Wuntch's comments in the Dallas Morning News would seem to apply to his fellow critics when he remarks: ?Closer reaches out and grabs all but the most reluctant viewer. Some spectators will be bored, but more will be shaken and stirred.?