The Business of Strangers Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)November 26th, 2001
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Every film-festival blurb I've seen for The Business of Strangers hails the picture as a female version of Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men, which kind of sucks because, if you've seen that film, you'll have a pretty good idea how the twist at the end will play out. I like to think of the film as more of a toned-down American version of Baise-moi, which itself was a French porn version of Thelma & Louise.
At any rate, Strangers is about two women who do some pretty awful stuff to a guy for a pretty shocking reason. One of the women is Julie Styron (Stockard Channing, The West Wing), a corporate executive who has sacrificed just about everything in her personal life to bust through the glass ceiling. When we first meet Julie, she's having a not-so-great day on what seems like an endless business trip. For starters, she gets a call from the CEO's personal assistant to set up a meeting later in the day with the big guy himself. Then an important sales presentation is hosed when Paula (Julia Stiles, O), the company's "tech girl," arrives 45 minutes late because of a flight delay.
Julie lashes out at and fires Paula, who, without missing a beat, calls her superior "über-frau" just before flipping her the bird. Julie brushes the incident off because she's too busy scheduling an impromptu meeting with a corporate headhunter named Nick Harris (Fred Weller) in anticipation of her engagement with the CEO, which she assumes will result in her termination. But it doesn't - instead, a stunned Julie is named as the replacement for the retiring honcho.
Celebrating in the bar of her hotel, Julie notices Paula and, feeling much better at this point about her position in the world, walks over and offers an apology for the incident earlier that day. Paula stiffly brushes it off, saying she didn't really need the job because her real ambition is to pursue a non-fiction writing career. The two start to talk and slowly begin to warm to each other's personalities. Julie, a community-college graduate, is probably a little jealous of Paula's spunky idealism, while Paula, a Dartmouth alum, might just be a tad envious of the power-wielding perks that come with ascending the corporate ladder as successfully as Julie has.
After numerous drinks, a trip to the hotel's gym, pool and sauna, and a very funny scene in an elevator packed with snickering men, the women bump into headhunter Nick. Paula begins to act a little oddly and later tells Julie that Nick raped one of her best friends in college. They decide to exact their revenge in a way that uniquely blends humor and horror, but anyone familiar with cinema knows there's more to the story than that. Is Paula telling the truth about Nick? Was it actually her that he raped? Is she making the whole thing up out of sheer boredom? Or is Paula just trying to get revenge on Julie for being mean to her?
Set over 24 hours, Strangers accurately portrays the mind-numbing existences business travelers face during layovers. Writer/director Patrick Stettner, making his feature-film debut here, did a wonderful job of both carefully scripting the dialogue and scouting boring, sterile corporate settings to serve as the backdrop to the backstabbing. Strangers is a very promising debut, but the quality of Stettner's writing and directing is topped only by a wonderful performance from Channing (easily her finest since Six Degrees of Separation, and possibly her best ever).
1:24 - R for strong language and some sexuality
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