Your Friends & Neighbors Review
by James Sanford (jasanfor AT MCI2000 DOT com)October 19th, 1998
YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS (Gramercy)
Directed by Neil Labute
Last week on a radio talk show, an author was discussing his new book about how the workplace could be redesigned to feed the spiritual needs of employees. When people tell you everything is "fine," he said, the word should be thought of as an acronym for "feelings inside not expressed." That theory is proven again and again throughout "Your Friends and Neighbors," a vicious, not-for-the-faint-of-heart comedy-drama in which seemingly nice folks frequently gather in restaurants, bookstores and bars to reassure each other that everything in their lives and relationships is "fine." Once these same people get behind closed doors, however, they offer plenty of evidence to the contrary.
If you saw writer-director Neil Labute's "In the Company of Men" last year, you know he's not exactly Mr. Feelgood and, if anything, this second effort is even darker and more nihilistic than "Men" because so many of the "Friends" are easily recognizible types. They don't, however, identify each other personally, so it's only by reading the press notes that we learn all their first names rhyme, almost as if they were sextuplets born to parents with a misguided sense of humor.
Marrieds Mary (Amy Brenneman) and Barry (Aaron Eckhart, considerably paunchier and meeker than he was as the lady-killer in "Men") just bought a lovely old house but it's no love nest, thanks to their sexual incompatability. On the other hand, copywriter Terri (Catherine Keener) and drama teacher Jerry (Ben Stiller) do have sex, but Terri can't tolerate Jerry's habit of shouting out things like "harmony! harmony!" in the heat of passion. Outside of these two couples stand Cheri (Nastassja Kinski), a free-spirited artist's assistant, and Cary (Jason Patric), a misogynstic gynecologist whose tales of vengeance against women wow Barry and Jerry. Though these people barely touch each other, in some ways "Friends" qualifies as one of the most violent movies of the year. Behind Cary's dull eyes lies an arctic wasteland and just listening to his eerie sermonettes about sex could give you frostbite. Scariest of all, this super-arrogant stud justifies much of the evil he perpetrates by telling his audience, "You'd have taken the same steps: Common decency dictated it."
Terri is almost as nasty, a hawkish creature with a face by Modigliani and an attitude copped from a spoiled child. Asked by one of her lovers what part of their lovemaking she most enjoyed, Terri snarls, "the silence," making it clear that's the end of the discussion. "Nobody actually likes you, you know?" Cary tells Terri during a particularly heated exchange in a bookstore; the comment doesn't faze self-absorbed Terri in the slightest. As "Friends" rolls along, circumstances arise that cause everyone to re-think their lives and to take hasty action. In most cases, of course, they do exactly the wrong thing, and Labute, again employing the same detached point-of-view he showed in his first film, charts his characters' moral declines mercilessly. Everyone ends up crawling from the wreckage, some more battered than others, but none unscathed.
The atmosphere here is sterile and deliberately calculated to focus attention solely on these six subjects, all of whom are well-detailed, especially by Keener, Eckhart and the quietly charming Kinski. Those who bristle at frank talk are likely to find listening to Labute's dialogue as unpleasant as having sandpaper rubbed against their ears for two hours andthe story's final twist should ensure no one leaves the theater whistling a happy tune.
But if you can get past the shock value, there's a veritable banquet of food for thought being presented here, as well as a wealth of humor in the conversations. Particularly memorable are the ones that revolve around the ridiculous "watch bracelet" Barry buys his wife as a gift -- "they're quite big in Europe," he assures her -- and the almost-whispered argument between Barry and Mary in a supermarket. "We need to treat each other like meat," Barry tells her. "Didn't we read that?" As Mary walks away in dazed disgust, Barry can't resist getting in the final word: "It was your book!" he bleats. James Sanford
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