Your Friends & Neighbors Review
by Seth Bookey (sethbook AT panix DOT com)October 1st, 1998
Hell Is a Shared Experience
Review of Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)
Seen on 22 September 1998 with Tony at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas for $8.75
Self-loathing is a supremely nihilistic achievement surpassed only by inflicting an active misanthropy for the ones you hold nearest and dearest, or, in the case of Your Friends and Neighbors, the ones with whom you are fornicating, or calling your comrades.
Written and directed by Neil LaBute, the creator of last year's misogyny fiesta, In the Company of Men, his latest film features a quintet of self-absorbed miserable people who don't like each other, or themselves, much. They talk a lot about sex, and in general, they are much better at talking about it than actually achieving a truly enjoyable sexual experience for each other or even themselves (with one possible exception).
LaBute creates an unenjoyable and even painful moviegoing experience, with characters that are free of character, utterly hyperbolic in their actions, which are often without motivation or provocation--which, unfortunately, is what a lot of people in real life are like. However, people are rarely as unrelenting as this highly concentrated pool of bile. Even the evil characters of the two versions of Les Liaisons Dangereuses were tempered by true feeling and other genuine and naive characters. The only real decisions we witness are over which catalog-color shirt to wear, "Logan or salmon?"
The basic plot: A man (Aaron Eckhart), completely self-absorbed, is married to a woman (Amy Brenneman), who writes about sex but isn't having a good sexlife herself, who in turn falls into a unfulfilling flirtation with her husband's best friend (Ben Stiller), a drama professor, who is living with a woman (Catherine Keener) who is sick of his constant vocal contemplation of everything in and out of bed. She winds up in bed with the art assistant (Nastassja Kinski) at an art gallery. Making all of them seem well-adjusted is the totally sociopathic friend (Jason Patric) of the two men who is more a rapist than a ladykiller, who calmly exacts revenge in a variety of ways for imagined and real slights, in the name of "common decency." His description of his participation is as difficult to watch as the actual rape scenes in The Accused or A Handmaid's Tale.
The five characters are only named in the credits; they are never called by names during the movie, adding to the dehumanizing experience this "immorality play" truly is.
The one true assest to the film is the filming. Characters are often shot off to the side, or with visual barriers between them: bookcases, gallery walls, beams in a suburban dreamhouse. Keeping the film focuses on just the five characters helps achieve the completely boxed-in feeling LaBute truly must've wanted to achieve: No Exit, Part Two (with heartless sex this time around).
Complete credited cast with names we never hear:
Amy Brenneman .... Mary
Aaron Eckhart .... Barry
Catherine Keener .... Terri
Nastassja Kinski .... Cheri
Jason Patric .... Cary
Ben Stiller .... Jerry
----------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1998, Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021 sethbook@panix.com; http://www.panix.com/~sethbook
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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