&Closer& takes the concept that &love hurts& and makes it the central theme for a movie as complex as love itself. Combining a unique style of storytelling, gritty, realistic dialogue that holds nothing back, and brilliant acting, &Closer& takes the viewer on a ride through a turbulent love story that makes Romeo and Juliet look like a stable relationship.

Based on the award winning 1997 play of the same name, &Closer& is the story of four people: Dan (Jude Law, Cold Mountain, A.I.), Alice (Natalie Portman, Mars Attacks, Star Wars: Episode I), Larry (Clive Owen, King Arthur, The Bourne Identity), and Anna (Julia Roberts, Ocean&s Eleven, Mona Lisa Smile). All of them meet randomly and then spend four years sorting out the tangled relationships that connect them all.

Part of the reason this movie works is that the way in which the story is told. Through the use of vignettes, the film tells each of the characters& stories, all of which represent a different aspect of the human psyche. Dan is an overly sensitive, aspiring novelist. Larry is a rugged, uncouth doctor. Anna is a romantically confused photographer. And Alice is a seemingly innocent, child-like former stripper and current waitress.

Each vignette in the movie covers a different relationship between everyone, like Dan meeting Alice, Larry and Dan accidentally meeting on the Internet, and Larry running across Alice working in a strip club. Since the movie focuses almost strictly on love and relationships, everything else is totally stripped out of the movie, leaving the audience with glimpses at only the critical shift in romance.

The dialogue helps the unique style of the movie. Nothing is held back, and few, if any, words are off limits. It&s a given that finding out that one&s significant other is cheating with someone else is a devastating revelation, but it&s so common in movies to brush over the kind of raw, obscene anger that can be felt at a moment like that. &Closer& could have easily been given a PG-13 rating and made more marketable, had some of the bad language been cut out, but the R rating it holds lets much more of the pure emotion through and adds to the film.

The story would be tough to pull off if it weren&t for the incredible acting. Law, Portman, and Owen give masterful performances that fit their characters well. From Law breaking down and crying to Owen screaming for sexual details during a particularly grueling breakup, the men give perfect performances. Portman does a superb job playing the seemingly innocent Alice, stashing her emotions away like some sort of jailer until they&re needed and come flooding out.

Julia Robert&s performance was the only one with more to be desired. In contrast to the intense performances of the other characters, Roberts gives a rather unsophisticated performance. The saving grace of her part is the fact that her character, Anna, is perhaps better served by being flat, as it seems to contribute to the confused nature of the photographer.

This is certainly a film that requires a lot of thought. The characters are very simple, but their interactions with each other are extremely deep and intricate. Almost every piece of the movie adds to its overall complexity. It&s a fulfilling movie, and also one has viewers leaving the theater pondering their own relationships.