January 21, 2005

Closer – Review by Pixeldiva

Hey there. Are you good? Excellent. Myself? Not so good – having some trouble with one of my hooves, but I’ll get by. I offer you a review of Closer that was sent to me by Pix. Hope you enjoy.
I’m the worst kind of person to go to the cinema with. I have very little patience for shit films, and will relentlessly pick huge holes from small flaws. I’m a cynic. I’ll roll my eyes at sickly Hollywood romanticism. I’ll mutter “as IF” under my breath when things are unrealistic.


It’s a bad habit, I know, but nonetheless, it’s something I can’t really help. Don’t get me wrong, I like going to the cinema, but, especially since moving to London, it’s so damned expensive that I want to feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. All too often the film disappoints me, so I suppose I feel like I have to provide my own entertainment and view it as an overall experience, rather than on its own merits.
I had my doubts about the experience I was going to have when a troupe of giggly drunk girls stomped past our row, strewing popcorn in their wake, one of them loudly announcing that she’d better sit on the end cos she was going to need a piss shortly.
Sure enough, she did, but managed to make it back (loudly) to her seat before the film started.
Then Natalie Portman turned up on screen, Damien Rice providing her soundtrack, making me seriously reconsider my earlier decision to buy brown hair dye instead of my usual red, and promptly got knocked down by a black cab.
I managed to get one sarky comment in, along the lines of it being only girls that look like her who can pull blokes that look like Jude Law by falling down in the street.
I was all ready to totally get my sneer on, when he predictably went all mushy over her, and being all gentlemanly and English, took it upon himself to
protect this “disarming” waif who’d pretty much dropped at his feet.

Then I got sucked in.
I winced at the conversation between Alice and Anna during the photoshoot.
I gasped and laughed and cringed at Dan and Larry’s first online conversation.
I bit my lip and failed to hold back the tears when Dan dropped the other shoe on Alice.
I wanted to stab the girls further along the row as they loudly expressed sympathy for Clive Owen’s (not Larry’s) broken heart, while being secretly grateful that they gave me the opportunity to wrestle my emotions back under control.
For me it was a car crash of a film. Unavoidably painful and at times shocking in its honesty, but at the same time, uplifting for reasons that I’m not sure I can adequately explain. Possibly because I survived with an amount of dignity intact, despite it hitting way too close to some of my personal experiences over the last year.
This is a film about life.
Etched in shades of grey, not black and white. No absolute right and no absolute wrong, only choices. No real answers, but lots of questions.
It made me feel.
It made me think.
It still is.
I think I have a new favourite film.
I’m just not sure I like it all that much.
If you have a review, send it to me and I shall not bite you.

Donkey

3 thoughts on “Closer – Review by Pixeldiva

  1. I was wondering, does anybody have an explaination as to why Julia Roberts gets a box of PGs down from the shelf and puts it on the worktop when she is making tea for Owen, only to help herself from a box of twinnings already on the worktop. Continuity error? Product placement? Some ploy to distract nit pickers like me from what is actually going on?

  2. I have one. When I make tea at home, I usually use Whittards Original teabags for me, and supermarket ornery teabags for Pete. This is because he almost always lets his tea get cold before drinking half of it, and I’m not prepared to waste the lovely WO on him. Therefore Anna was making nice Twinings tea for herself, and Larry was getting a cup of PG.

    Karen on January 22, 2005
  3. It’s all true. Furthermore, on those rare occasions when I do manage to get some of the tea inside me, I can’t tell the difference anyway.
    However, you could present Karen with a blind taste test between a pint of Boddingtons and a pint of Smooth and she wouldn’t have a clue which was which. So we both get our chances to be snobbish at the other’s expense.

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