"CLOSER"

Movie: Closer (2004) RATING: 8/10 Directed by: Mike Nichols Written by: Patrick Marber (adapted from a screenplay by Patrick Marber) CAST... Natalie Portman: Alice Jude Law: Dan Julia Roberts: Anna Clive Owen:Larry MPAA: Rated R (for sequences of graphic sexual dialogue, nudity/sexuality and language.) Runtime: 104 min Natalie Portman can play a 16 year-old or a 26 year-old with her hands tied behind her back. In "Closer," she's a 20-something girl who is the centerpiece of a film that lets us watch four wonderfully flawed characters follow their hearts into places that make us feel a little like voyeurs. Clive Owen, Jude Law and Julia Roberts round out this cast of ordinary people that keep getting caught at the top of some kind of Evil Tree of Romantic Temptation with no way down, and no fire department to rescue them. Now, Portman, Roberts, Law and Owen are four good looking people. You could probably turn off the sound and enjoy the film as eye-candy. But to reach the film's core you have to listen. The dialog between these characters is either so tenderly innocent or sharply cruel that you want to smile warmly or slap one of them for being so stupid. The emotional charge in "Closer" is fueled by passion, temptation, love, cruelty, hate ... and sex. Portman meets Law in the film's opening scenes, and a relationship develops. Roberts and Owens are also paired up as the film opens, as husband and wife. Periodically, "Closer" shifts back and forth in time (never to the point of confusion), but what we see in the beginning is kind of like looking down the lane at bowling pins right before you roll the ball at them. Owen's character, a doctor, is a disaster waiting to happen. Portman is a happening waiting for a disaster. Roberts, a photographer, is more complicated to figure out, but her marriage is in trouble as soon as she meets Law, an author, whom she is photographing for a professional book cover. Law's future is a little harder to predict. Portman's character is reminiscent of Meg Ryan's romantic leads: You like her so much you don't want to see her feelings get hurt. Throughout the film everyone's feelings get hurt; relationships form, they fall apart, and they form again. Owen looks so emotionally trampled in one scene where we see him enter a bar it's almost funny. Almost. But he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor because it's not funny. It's as real as it gets. Portman won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress because we believe everything she is feeling, too. Roberts' and Law's characters are just as believeable and real, but played out a little more quietly. There's a surprise at the end. A little gift for the audience -- one closeup in an airport scene -- that you have to pay attention to see. It is just one of many scenes that separate "Closer" from the rest of the pack as a film about believeable people, and what those people can do to each other that brings as much love as pain. -2001pm -30-