Dir: Neil LaBute
Star: Amy Brenneman, Aaron Eckhart, Catherine Keener, Nastassja Kinski
“What are we looking at here, huh? Lace and language aside, in the end, it’s actually men and women. Right? Just like any other story. Like every story, ultimately, what do these characters want? I know. It’s embarrassing for you to say, but let’s be honest. They wanna… Fuck. Correct? It’s always about fucking.”
The movie’s second scene has college drama professor Jerry (Ben Stiller) breaking down a restoration comedy for his class, but it might as well be LaBute talking directly to the audience, and telling them what the rest of the movie is going to be about. And, Christ, is it a soul-sucking experience. Not that this is a “bad” film: you can see why Stiller, Keener and Eckhart have all become much more famous than they were at the time this was made. LaBute, too, is certainly one of America’s foremost dramatists, though his movie work has been, to be kind, uneven, as anyone who sat through his re-invention of The Wicker Man can attest. This certainly isn’t anywhere near that. However, In ten words or less: this is unpleasant people being unpleasant to each other.
Make no mistake though: this is what LaBute does, has done and, I’ve little doubt will continue to do. LaBute’s cynical dislike for humanity – one critic called him “a misanthrope who assumes that only callous and evil people who use and abuse others can survive in this world.” – shines through virtually every frame of this 100 minutes. But this doesn’t mean I necessarily want to wallow down there with him, venomously scripted and vengefully acted this may be. Now, it’s not as if I require all my films to be Disney-fied, or anything close to it: I could happily come up with an eloquent defense of some utterly brutal movies like Martyrs [though you’ll have to look elsewhere]. But if I’m going to peer into the abyss, I want to be repaid for my time with some kind of insight into…. something. I’m really not too picky. Yet I come out the end of this no better informed, lacking in education and certainly not entertained.
I’m sure it was intended as some kind of scathing critique of self-absorbed assholes, whose interests are largely limited to themselves. But merely depicting self-absorbed assholes, of a kind with which I am quite familiar [I worked for the IT department of a stock trading company in the City of London during the ‘Big Bang’ of the 90’s; I know a thing or two about self-absorbed assholes], does not count as any kind of critique, let alone scathing. As well as Jerry, there is his wife Terri (Keener), and the first thing we hear from her is complaints about Jerry’s vocal tendencies during sex, which she finds distracting. She ends up cheating on him with artist’s assistant Cheri (Kinski), on whom all the male members of the cast also hit, in the same place, to somewhat different effect. These variations on a theme is about the only sequence which seemed to have a demonstrable point.
The counterpoint is another loose triangle of rhyming names: husband and wife Barry (Eckhart) and Mary (Brenneman), plus defiantly single Cary (Jason Patric), a ruthless predator. That married pair is no happier, and Jerry puts a tentacle out to Mary, leading to an assignation in a hotel room, although this doesn’t go well or bring either party the slightest bit of happiness. Jerry is unable to perform sexually, and Mary is dismayed when her husband subsequently brings her to exactly the same spot, hoping to rekindle their romance – apparently at the suggestion of Jerry. Cary, meanwhile, may be the biggest turd of them all; during a discussion with Jerry and Berry, he virtually boasts about raping a (male) schoolmate, calling it the “best fuck” he ever had. While extreme, that’s another pattern here: none of the characters demonstrate the slightest regret about their actions, regardless of their impact on anyone else. There’s no karmic retribution to be found here either; the film ends with the deck of relationship cards somewhat shuffled, but no suggestion anyone has learned anything from their experiences.
It does possess an unblinking ferocity, mostly in Cary’s character, who appears about the thickness of a Phil Collins’ CD from going entirely American Psycho, as in when he berates for of his conquests for getting blood on his high thread-count sheets. He does, at least, have an honesty about him, and does not care what you think. Compared to him, the rest of the cast are milquetoasts. LaBute appears to be aiming to occupy similar territory as David Mamet, another director whose true passion appears to lie in live theater, but who can unflinchingly turn an extremely chilly eye on relationships and the carnage which results from them. However, he is far less cynical, and is willing to depict the good as well as the bad: in his films, people may do bad things, but their motivations are not so arbitrarily selfish as here.
I note the careful lack of any specific location for this: it could be New York, Los Angeles or anywhere in between, and the title appears to be suggesting that the people portrayed are just like the viewers. Their names are not even revealed during the film, not that they matter. I read some reviews which described this in terms like, “savagely funny,” which seemed so incredibly wide of the mark I had to check there weren’t two films with the same title. Because I actually found this entirely joyless and mostly depressing, a bleak nihilistic experience provoking as much genuine emotional reaction as a porn loop. The late Roger Ebert said of this, “It’s the kind of date movie that makes you want to go home alone.” Alternatively, it’s the kind of date movie that makes you very glad to be in a relationship which is absolutely nothing at all like those pictured.
