First, I am really tired of excellent movies, intelligent movies, starring people too beautiful for words. Super-ultra famous beautiful people as well. It does not help when the incredibly talented super-ultra famous beautiful people, not only make a shitload of money making these excellent movies, they are goddamned good as well.

Fine. Got that off my chest. "Closer" is not a movie for hopeless romantics, although they can take masochistic pleasure in the stories. "Closer" is not for the people who've had their hearts broken, who regret their mistakes, who long for that one person they just know is out there. Only 25% of the people in "Closer" get a happy ending, and he knows it's a compromise. "Closer" is for people who are hopeless romantics, who've had their hearts broken, who regret their mistakes, who long for that one person they just know is out there, and who finally — finally — held that perfect love in their hands for one brief, glorious moment — and then had it taken away forever. "Closer" is for the people, broken hearts and broken dreams, who had love and lost love and not find closure.

Because sometimes we fall in love beyond our ability to cope. We fall in love and we cannot resist — even though we can resist acting, doing. We can resist hurting someone who loves us or pressuring the person we love so desperately from hurting the one who loves them. It is possible to live with the pain of love, and it's one thing for that to be your own choice — god, how noble. But when the choice is made for us; when we are so terribly and horribly in love and he, she says "Yes yes! I love you too!" and then flees, disappears forever....

But enough about me. The movie. Jude Law was wonderfully overwhelmed and cowardly and pathetic. He did love Anna, and he did love Alice, and he had no real capacity to love. He cut the crusts off his sandwiches because his mother cut the crusts off his sandwiches, but she died over 20 years ago; he wrote a novel and it didn't do well and so he gave up. Julia Roberts used the love others had for her to punish herself; she wasn't worthy of love, so she made sure she gave up her true love to spend her life with a man out of guilt. Clive Owen is better at the quiet roles than ones that require "emoting," but he plays the self-centered turns without the slightest trace of guilt or conscience. And Natalie Portman, besides having no qualms about displaying her ass without blushing (no need, but some do), is, as she claims, a waif. I find it perfectly plausible she has left New York as a sequence of the life we first saw in "The Professional." She's that same little girl, just with new skills.

Enough about the movie. These are a bunch of stupid people making stupid mistakes for stupid reasons. I get enough of that in my own life. There are good lines —

Alice: "What's my euphenism"?
Dan:"She was disarming."
Alice: "That's not a euphenism."
pause
Dan: "Yes it is."

And it's the pause, the gleam in his eye, the moment; that makes the line work. Time Magazine called this, according the blurb on the dvd package, "a love story for adults." No, this is no love story. This is a story about failure and cowardice and selfishness. Stupid people. Besides, there's already a love story for adults, and Steven Soderburgh made it way back in 1989: "sex, lies and videotape." again featuring fabulously beautiful people, but at least one had the guts to follow her heart. Funny how well that can work, now and then. But not with stupid people, like in "Closer." The best part of the move? Discovering Damien Rice and his amazing song "The Blower's Daughter." Worth the price of admision.