The Business of Strangers Review
by Harvey S. Karten (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)December 7th, 2001
THE BUSINESS OF STRANGERS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
IFC Films/ i5 Films
Director: Patrick Stettner
Writer: Patrick Stettner
Cast: Stockard Channing, Julia Stiles, Fred Weller, Mary Testa, Jack Hallett, Marcus Giamatti, Buddy Fitzpatrick, Salem Ludwig, Shelagh Ratner
"The Business of Strangers," which without loss of meaning could have been entitled "The Strangeness of Business," is a theatrical film, Patrick Stettner's feature debut as writer-director, dealing ostensibly with the high-power corporate world but at root an inquiry into human emotions. A postmodern look at a power struggles between one who has it and one on whose favor she depends, Stettner's chamber work looks as though Ted Maniaci's lens took him right up to the first row of an off-Broadway stage-- not at all impossible considering the glorious record of its co-star, Stockard Channing, as cutting-edge characters in productions like "Six Degrees of Separation," "The Little Foxes" and "Woman in Mind." Think of the classic power plays between Shakespeare's Iago and Othello, Pinter's Davies and Aston, Sophocles's Antigone and Creon, and then image a postmodern version situated against the backdrop of corporate intrigue: that will give you just an overview of what Stettner has in mind here, a film subject to various interpretations of the players' motives, sexual orientations, and sincerity.
Ms. Channing, whose features haven't changed a bit since I last saw her a decade ago as Blair the spy catcher in Tom Stoppard's "Hapgood," performs in the role of Julie, a high-level sales person for a software company. Thinking she is about to be fired when her CEO asks to meet her for lunch, she makes an appointment with headhunter Nick Harris (Frederick Weller) to find a new company. Discovering instead that she has been appointed to the top job in the firm, she's in the mood to celebrate, but makes the mistake of hooking up with Paula (Julia Stiles), her much younger assistant, whom she had just fired but now decides to conciliate with a drink. What happens between them as they drag headhunter Nick into their tete-a-tete prompts us to think of the battle royal between Edward Albee's George and Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"--particularly given Ms. Channing's resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor.
Stettner is traveling into Neil LaBute territory here, influenced perhaps by that writer's "In the Company of Men," which on the surface is a distasteful conspiracy of two yuppie office workers to humiliate a deaf woman who works for the firm but which is instead the working out of one man's hidden agenda against his "buddy." Having made the error of befriending the assistant she had dismissed, Julie becomes subjected to a harrowing barrage of words flung in her direction by the seemingly self-assured youth. Like the wedding guest frozen in place by the ancient mariner, she cannot drag herself away from Paula because Paula's indictment against the older woman--what she has had to go through most of her life to climb to the top, what she has given up for a job that does not even make her happy--is on target. Julie's exertions in striking back at the arrogant and attractive Paula, while hitting the mark as well, are not nearly as effective since Paula has little to lose. For his part, Nick is a hopelessly weak third party, taking some of the brunt of Paula's hostility but the real damage is to Julie who must now re-assess her life in light of the insolence of a woman not even half her age.
Stockard Channing and the seemingly ubiquitous Julia Stiles ("Hamlet," "State & Main," "Save the Last Dance," "O") display surprisingly good, apprehensive chemistry given the difficulty that a brash and punky, man-hating kid would have to convince us that she can demolish her worldly-wise senior. While the film is absorbing despite its slow-pace and staginess, what passes for lacerating wit is nothing that would make Tom Stoppard or Edward Albee worry about filing for unemployment insurance.
Not Rated. Running time: 84 minutes. (C) 2001 by
Harvey Karten, [email protected]
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