Closer

Apart from the celine dion crowd, and the people who live in an extrapolation of the "ever after" concept in fairy tales, people know that relationships are complicated, because they house a big amount of conflict all the time, things get more complicated when covetness enters in the game, and it gets complicated to the Nth degree when parties involved have a hidden agenda, one of the most faithful portrayals of all of the above is the movie "Closer" by Mike Nichols

Four people from diffrent nationalities and diffrent backgrounds, two British men Dan (Jude Law) and Larry (Clive Owen) , and two American women Alice (Natalie Portman) and Anna(Julia Roberts) meet in London during diffrent circumstances, and they fall in love, end up engaged, married and living together, then doubts start to arise on the accuracy of their choices, then adultry and cheating and double lives enter inevitably in thie mixture, brining many changes to their situation, in a game where nobody wins, and where winners congratulate the losers, the very game of life.

So great is this movie, because it's so simple, it doesn't need plot devices because the characters tell the truth to the people they are supposed to deceive, Larry and Anna are hugely successful in their profession, Dan and Alice are struggling, and it doesn't change a darned thing, it's all the same, it's the same green on the both sade, and since this movie was adapted from a play long unedited sequences reveal the past and intentions of characters, it says much about the state of relationships in this century, people want everything so much that they end up with ... nothing

The artistic praise in this movie goes to Mr Nichols, and Patrick Marber the writer, without forgetting the majestic performances from Natalie Portman and Clive Owen (both golden globe winners for that), the scene where a washed up Dan goes to see Alice in the strip club is so intense that you could make a movie just out of it.

Well for the rest of the world creaming about upper mid class western life, this is as faithful a portrayal as it gets, and in the words of the great Warren Zevon "Rich folks suffer like the rest of us, it will happen to you", so perhaps at the end of this movie you will realise that your relationship is not that miserable after all, and that's the bonus form of self help one can get out of a brilliant piece of a movie making, and granted it's a movie you will never get tired of.