I watched Closer with my lady today. Being in possession of extraordinary talent, I can sum up the film in one short sentence, using only 6 words in 10 syllables:

"Two cheating couples having monkey sex."

There. I challenge those who have caught the movie to beat my summary. Make sure you retain the element of adultery and/or lying and/ or dirty talk and/ or manic, indiscriminate sex that I've cleverly associated with the word monkey.

On a more serious note, Closer is a movie that highlights the isolation in today's dysfunctional society. It doesn't attempt to whitewash or present an haughty, art-house air that will ensure eternal devotion from reviewers like Ong Sor Fern (Incidentally, she will also give Brad Pitt's naked torso 5 stars. Peter Jackson had to recreate Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings, Wolfgang Petersen only had to make Brad Pitt strip in the farce that is Troy.). The plot is marginally sophisticated, and the dialogue is earthy and rancous 75% of the time. But it succeeds spendidly in presenting four deeply flawed characters who will drive psychiatrists delirious with joy. While no viewers can ultimately root for any of them, they become the conduit through which modern relationships are deconstructed in the film. The lack of trust, love, commitment and decency that is laid out jars the senses. Selfishness, deceit, spinelessness, unfaithfulness all become "the currency of the world".

What I particularly enjoyed though was Natalie Porter's character, Alice. Porter doesn't light up the screen like Julia Roberts does, but her role of a deceptive ingenue was so well written and subtle that I didn't appreciate it until long after the credits rolled. Her identity is shrouded in mystery, and viewers later realize that not even her name is real. "Alice" was stolen off a memorial plate - she is actually a person who died in the rescue of another. Her appearance radically changes, and her chosen profession is by turns a wanderer, a muse, a stripper, a waitress. Her opening words, "Hello, stranger.", define the movie from beginning to end. Her saucy strut taunts you to label her, though she clearly knows that all that you have come to believe of her has been based on a facade. When the credits roll, even the viewers are strangers to the film. Seeking a resolution and finding none, realizing that so much that we accepted as the movie's reality were actually lies, we can't help but feel the bite of isolation even more. (I can see that look on your face... You think computing students can't be arty farty too??)

This reminds me of a poem by Matthew Arnold, titled To Marguerite and prominently alluded to in John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman:

Yes: in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown.
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollow lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour;

O then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent!
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent.
Now round us spreads the watery plain--
O might our marges meet again!

Who order'd that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renders vain their deep desire?--
A God, a God their severence ruled;
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.

So maybe- just maybe- the monkey sex had something to it afterall.