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Slippery Creatures: Your Friends & Neighbors
Village Voice - August 19 - 25, 1998
BY J. HOBERMAN
Your Friends & Neighbors, Neil LaBute's follow-up to last summer's cleverest horror
film, In the Company of Men, is comparably creeped out and claustrophobic--a
fascinatingly mean-spirited erotic comedy set in a realm of self-absorbed fantasy
and overdetermined intergender misunderstanding.
Venturing into territory where no modern sitcom is yet prepared to go, although not
far from the spot where In the Company of Men left off, Your Friends & Neighbors
begins with a flurry of trompe l'oeil nastiness: A sexual athlete rehearses his pillow
talk with the help of a tape recorder, a randy professor demonstrates for his
students that Restoration comedy is "always about fucking." So, too, LaBute's
movie--except that, as subsequent vignettes make abundantly clear, fucking is
always about power, failure, and humiliation.
Jerry the drama prof (Ben Stiller) learns that lesson soon enough when his
significant other Terri, (Catherine Keener), puts a damper on his verbose lovemaking
by asking him to shut up: "This is not a travelogue." (The acerbic Keener has the
bitchiest lines in the movie: "Fucking is fucking, it's not a time for sharing," she'll
later tell a group of women friends.) Cut from miserable couple A to their friends,
miserable couple B. Barry (Aaron Eckhart) fails to respond to his wife Mary (Amy
Brenneman)--or is it Mary not responding to Barry, who later tells some guy at work
that "nobody makes me come like I do."
Although predicated largely on such one-liners, Your Friends & Neighbors develops
a narrative when, with Jerry and Terri enjoying a somewhat strained dinner chez
Barry and Mary, Jerry takes advantage of an opportune moment to sexually
proposition his hostess. Despite Jerry and Mary's fantasies of self-improvement ("I'm
very optimistic," he tells her as they check into a hotel), adultery proves just as
awkward and unsatisfying as every other human relationship in LaBute's movie--
although it does set off a realignment of the stars.
Doubling the triangle at the heart of Company of Men, Friends & Neighbors is
enlivened by its ensemble acting. Ben Stiller--the most fearless comic performer in
American movies--adds another portrait to his gallery of off-putting neurotics. Stiller's
combination of lewd monkey-man and overanalytical nerd draws sparks from both
the always estimable Catherine Keener--herself oscillating between cajoling vixen
and vicious cojones breaker--and winsome Amy Brenneman, whose Mary is usually
a few beats behind the others. Aaron Eckhart, the diabolical seducer of In the
Company of Men, is punished for his earlier sins--appearing here as a pitiful
zhlub--while Jason Patric, who coproduced the picture, handles not only the role of
an unsympathetic bully but an ostentatiously daring soliloquy.
A sour La Ronde of chance meetings and symmetrical repetitions, Friends &
Neighbors progresses through a series of one-on-one come-ons, trysts, and scenes
in which characters confront their unfaithful partners, typically picking a supermarket
aisle as the place for a domestic squabble. ("I tried to at least fuck outside our
calling circle," is one memorable reproach.) As in his first feature, LaBute eschews
exteriors and establishing shots. The framing is precise, the editing minimalized,
the setups recurring. Each of the principals has an opportunity to meet the
gorgeous gallery assistant Cheri (Nastassja Kinski) in situ. But, if Friends &
Neighbors feels less formally worked out--as well as less politically astute--than the
ruthlessly constructed Company of Men, it may be that LaBute took advantage of
his first feature's success to dust off an earlier script.
Trapped in LaBute's Skinner box, the characters
are condemned to repeat their behavioral
patterns while metaphors are piled on innuendos
and erotic intrigue corkscrews through the most
innocuous interaction. What circle of hell do
these lying, manipulating characters inhabit? (Or
is hell their relationships with withholding,
belittling, depressed partners?) Designed to
make the viewer squirm, Your Friends &
Neighbors is more than a little funny, and a good
deal more misanthropic than even In the
Company of Men. I doubt we'll see acrueler sex
comedy until Todd Solondz's Happiness opens this fall. Although frequently
compared to David Mamet, LaBute's is a distinctive sensibility, at once antisensual
and lascivious, as punitive as it is provocative.
Perhaps the movie is not apolitical after all. Although the six characters don't have
to go very far in search of their author, LaBute doesn't have the generosity to identify
them as "our friends and neighbors," let alone the guts to call them his. There's a
giddy sense of puritan revenge--as though the filmmaker's dream audience would be
watching these antics from the stocks.
Copyright © 1998 Village Voice. All rights reserved.
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