Tagline: If you believe love at first sight, you never stop looking.
An elaborate character study of two London couples as they engage in an ultimate game of partner swapping. Alice/Jane is a gorgeous young runaway from New York’s seedy sex industry; she soon pairs up with Dan, a thoughtful but unsuccessful novelist and journalist, who authors a book about her. Anna is a quietly independent divorce and successful photographer. After Dan makes a move on her during a photo session for the book, she rejects Dan, who retaliates by tricking her into a relationship with Larry, a dermatologist with the lust and manners of a soccer hooligan.
The plot revolves around the infatuation of the couples for one another. If they could only treat these dalliances with the silence they deserve, there would be no story here. Instead, they are brutally “honest” about their faithlessness, sometimes inventing boinks that never occurred to “test the love” of their significant other. Ultimately, each ends up with the partner for whom they are best suited; but has their desire to “win” at the game of love diminished their capacity to love and to enjoy its fruits?
Closer is a 2004 U.S. melodrama film written by Patrick Marber, based on his award-winning 1997 play of the same name. The movie was produced and directed by Mike Nichols and stars Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen. The film, like the play on which it is based, has been seen by some as a modern and tragic version of Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte, with references to the opera in both the plot and the soundtrack. Owen starred in the play as Dan, the role played by Law in the film.
The film was released on December 3, 2004 in North America. Closer opened in 476 theaters, but the theater count was increased after the film was released. The film was domestically a moderate financial success, grossing $33,987,757. Huge success followed in the international market, where the film grossed an additional $81,517,270; over 70% of its $115,505,027 worldwide gross. The film was produced on a budget of US$27 million.
The main theme of the film follows Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte, with references to that opera in both the plot and the soundtrack.[4] One of the pivotal scenes develops to the background of the overture to Rossini’s opera La Cenerentola (“Cinderella”). The soundtrack also contains songs from Jem, Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan, Bebel Gilberto, The Devlins, The Prodigy and The Smiths.
The music of Irish folk singer Damien Rice is featured in the film, most notably the song “The Blower’s Daughter,” whose lyrics had parallels to many of the themes in the film. The opening notes from Rice’s song “Cold Water” are also used repeatedly, notably in the memorial park scenes. Rice wrote a song titled “Closer” which was intended for use in the film but was not completed in time.
Beginnings, Ends, Middles
Patrick Marber’s comedy / drama “Closer” debuted in London in 1997 to rave reviews and won the Laurence Olivier / BBC Award for Best New Play and the London Critics Circle Award. The subsequent Broadway production was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play and won the New York Critics Award. It has since gone on to be produced in more than 100 cities around the world and translated into 30 languages.
The playwright describes Closer as “a love story. It’s about other things of course —sexual jealousy, the male gaze, the lies we tell ourselves and those we are most intimate with, the ways in which people find themselves through using others. But in the end, it’s a nice simple love story. And as with most love stories, things go wrong…”
The title, he contends, is open to interpretation. “I wanted something ambiguous, that might give you a sense of mood without closing down the possibilities of what the story might mean.”
About the Production
Seven years ago, when producer John Calley (who was then chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment) first read Marber’s play he was “crazy about it,” he says. “It’s a remarkable document about our time, witty, immensely romantic and very dangerous — and I think, very important.”
What intrigued Calley and Sony Pictures chairman Amy Pascal was Marber’s witty and bitingly accurate dissection of romance in the modern era. “Marber underscores the complexity of contemporary relationships in which the beginnings are so highly charged and exciting that the process of falling in love can become addictive. People can become falling-in-love junkies and find that habit difficult to kick. Throughout the play, Marber makes acute comments that are both witty and fun. The humor is always informed and sometimes heartbreaking.”
When Calley and Pascal met with Marber and expressed interest in turning his play into a movie, however, he turned them down, says Calley. “He was appropriately dismissive and wouldn’t sell it to us because he wanted a more fulfilled sense of who would be making the movie.”
Fortunately, years later, after its successful Broadway run, director Mike Nichols became interested in the project. Like his most recent adaptations of the widely acclaimed plays “Wit” and “Angels in America,” Closer dealt with intimate issues with humor and complexity. Nichols thought it would lend itself to film adaptation very well because its structure was innately cinematic and because it contained four leading roles which were interesting and complex, and whose personalities change and evolve through the course of the story.
Nichols seemed the ideal director for the project, since it bore similarities to some of his previous films including the acclaimed comedy / dramas The Graduate, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Carnal Knowledge, in which he demonstrated an intuitiveness about relationships between men and women.
The project came full circle when Nichols approached Calley to finance the project. The two men have been the best of friends for the past 40 years. They met when Nichols was part of the acclaimed comedy team of Nichols and (Elaine) May and Calley briefly dated May. Calley produced one of Nichols’ early films, an adaptation of Joseph Heller’s classic Catch-22. They later worked together on such hit films as Postcards from the Edge, Remains of the Day and The Birdcage.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Closer (2004)
Directed by: Mike Nichols
Starring: Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, Michael Haley, Colin Stinton, Nick Hobbs, Elizabeth Bower, Rene Costa, Daniel Dresner, Rrenford Junior Fagan
Screenplay by: Patrick Marber
Production Design by: Tim Hatley
Cinematography by: Stephen Goldblatt
Film Editing by: John Bloom, Antonia Van Drimmelen
Costume Design by: Ann Roth
Set Decoration by: John Bush
Art Direction by: Grant Armstrong, Hannah Moseley, Mark Raggett
MPAA Rating: R for sequences of graphic sexual dialogue, nudity / sexuality, language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: December 3, 2004
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