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Aha! I'm back from outerspace to say ...
I just saw this and would give it 4/5 ... mainly because it was a very "blinders-on-a-pell-mell-path" vision of a play that was already one-track minded. However, working with what you've got, the film turned out to be pretty good and could have been a lot worse.
Mainly, the dialogue was at several points unbelievable and play-like - as in, you could totally see the "pose" and composition of the scene, almost like a pencil sketch. Particularly at the end of the film when Clive has to work magic with 360-degree turns of character (I hate you ... please want me ... you're a **** ... why'd you do this to me?) and Natalie has to tell Jude, "It's done. Now **** off."
Analogy: Some people can sketch so well on paper the scene is alive, you don't realize it's mere pencil or charcoal that built the vision. And sometimes people can draw a pretty picture but the artifice of it (the pencil/charcoal, contrivance of the scene) is just too obvious for you to get drawn in and suspend your disbelief.
So this happened often in the film, and it's only saving grace was Clive Owen and Natalie Portman. Clive is a veteran, talented actor and the moment I knew he was in it, I knew he'd deliver. Plus I have the hots for him. Natalie was more of a question for me - we saw good things in "Garden State" but that character was just too easy. So, in this one, we see her really dig into it, and do well.
Julia played it safe and added no real depth to her character. She hinted at it, but in the end, she played out her character in an unbelievable light. Basically, for someone to make the choices she did, she needed to have more emotion BEHIND it. More confusion, more loss, more guilt, more selfishness, more fervent submission to something she purportedly didn't want to do. Her character just came out sort of like a bored victim saint. She suffers all of Clive's "roughness" and sorta half ass insists she won't succumb to Jude, then succumbs and behaves just the same as she did after the affair starts, as she did before. So she was just dry, something like a B- in her performance. I think she just misinterpreted her character.
This all points also to something someone wrote in a newspaper review i read ... somewhere. Hehehe. They basically said the play, and therefore the movie, is writing about caricatures and puppets acting out a sketch (pencil, charcoal). These people have no backstory beyond their jobs and the initial sexual intrigue that connects each (how jude met natalie, how julia met clive). So they are totally isolate, which is also unrealistic, which is also why it was hard to suspend disbelief.
<SPOILER>
If they'd given us more moments like the amazing net chat session - now THAT was scene, alive, with characters really getting into emotion, hidden meating, dialogue. IT was funny, raw, and REAL. TRUE. People really do that, and do it that way.
</SPOILER>
As for the story and the crudity, etc. - like I said, Natalie and Clive made more of it than Jude/Julia. Though also perhaps it's bias, we end up liking those two characters more than the other two, based on their actions. But honestly I think the story needed more filler, we needed more true behavior and dialogue, and all that just points to the script. The script was a C- and the cast turned it into a B+. Which is why it gets 4/5 stars. It was trying to access how people treat one another when they THINK it's love they know and are after, but in the end, it's all a selfish idea of love.
The truest love was Natalie's, and she put it best - "Why won't you let me love you? why won't you be satisfied with what I've got to give you? Why are you chasing someone else right in front of me?" She refused to play the evil game the others play of marking lines, taking possession, and was the wisest - as she told him Clive while he let the betrayal of Julia degrade him, "This is not a war." But for so many, particularly men the film says, it is.
As for Clive, he was openly selfish, so his love was second-truest. His ego was all caught up in his surrender to Julia. It's common enough - you open up and "debase" yourself (give up the self) to someone else, only to find someone ran with it and betrayed you. We then get caught up in the betrayal, feeling stupid, feeling raped, in a way. Being male, Clive was outraged to feel that way, to feel powerless (as women so often do, but we don't get to threaten someone physically as he does, as men do).
But as for Jude/Julia ... they just seemed to sort of slide along into their situation, Jude being petulant and needy as always and that's not a really impressive character interpretation. He does that well - I want to see him do something more challenging.
And that's it!
and did i say again, how hot clive was? julia was a dumb*ss to treat him like she did.
I just saw this and would give it 4/5 ... mainly because it was a very "blinders-on-a-pell-mell-path" vision of a play that was already one-track minded. However, working with what you've got, the film turned out to be pretty good and could have been a lot worse.
Mainly, the dialogue was at several points unbelievable and play-like - as in, you could totally see the "pose" and composition of the scene, almost like a pencil sketch. Particularly at the end of the film when Clive has to work magic with 360-degree turns of character (I hate you ... please want me ... you're a **** ... why'd you do this to me?) and Natalie has to tell Jude, "It's done. Now **** off."
Analogy: Some people can sketch so well on paper the scene is alive, you don't realize it's mere pencil or charcoal that built the vision. And sometimes people can draw a pretty picture but the artifice of it (the pencil/charcoal, contrivance of the scene) is just too obvious for you to get drawn in and suspend your disbelief.
So this happened often in the film, and it's only saving grace was Clive Owen and Natalie Portman. Clive is a veteran, talented actor and the moment I knew he was in it, I knew he'd deliver. Plus I have the hots for him. Natalie was more of a question for me - we saw good things in "Garden State" but that character was just too easy. So, in this one, we see her really dig into it, and do well.
Julia played it safe and added no real depth to her character. She hinted at it, but in the end, she played out her character in an unbelievable light. Basically, for someone to make the choices she did, she needed to have more emotion BEHIND it. More confusion, more loss, more guilt, more selfishness, more fervent submission to something she purportedly didn't want to do. Her character just came out sort of like a bored victim saint. She suffers all of Clive's "roughness" and sorta half ass insists she won't succumb to Jude, then succumbs and behaves just the same as she did after the affair starts, as she did before. So she was just dry, something like a B- in her performance. I think she just misinterpreted her character.
This all points also to something someone wrote in a newspaper review i read ... somewhere. Hehehe. They basically said the play, and therefore the movie, is writing about caricatures and puppets acting out a sketch (pencil, charcoal). These people have no backstory beyond their jobs and the initial sexual intrigue that connects each (how jude met natalie, how julia met clive). So they are totally isolate, which is also unrealistic, which is also why it was hard to suspend disbelief.
<SPOILER>
If they'd given us more moments like the amazing net chat session - now THAT was scene, alive, with characters really getting into emotion, hidden meating, dialogue. IT was funny, raw, and REAL. TRUE. People really do that, and do it that way.
</SPOILER>
As for the story and the crudity, etc. - like I said, Natalie and Clive made more of it than Jude/Julia. Though also perhaps it's bias, we end up liking those two characters more than the other two, based on their actions. But honestly I think the story needed more filler, we needed more true behavior and dialogue, and all that just points to the script. The script was a C- and the cast turned it into a B+. Which is why it gets 4/5 stars. It was trying to access how people treat one another when they THINK it's love they know and are after, but in the end, it's all a selfish idea of love.
The truest love was Natalie's, and she put it best - "Why won't you let me love you? why won't you be satisfied with what I've got to give you? Why are you chasing someone else right in front of me?" She refused to play the evil game the others play of marking lines, taking possession, and was the wisest - as she told him Clive while he let the betrayal of Julia degrade him, "This is not a war." But for so many, particularly men the film says, it is.
As for Clive, he was openly selfish, so his love was second-truest. His ego was all caught up in his surrender to Julia. It's common enough - you open up and "debase" yourself (give up the self) to someone else, only to find someone ran with it and betrayed you. We then get caught up in the betrayal, feeling stupid, feeling raped, in a way. Being male, Clive was outraged to feel that way, to feel powerless (as women so often do, but we don't get to threaten someone physically as he does, as men do).
But as for Jude/Julia ... they just seemed to sort of slide along into their situation, Jude being petulant and needy as always and that's not a really impressive character interpretation. He does that well - I want to see him do something more challenging.
And that's it!
and did i say again, how hot clive was? julia was a dumb*ss to treat him like she did.