YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS (Gramercy) Starring: Amy Brenneman, Aaron Eckhart, Catherine Keener, Nastassja Kinski, Jason Patric, Ben Stiller. Screenplay: Neil LaBute. Producers: Jason Patric and Steve Golin Director: Neil LaBute. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, sexual situations, adult themes) Running Time: 100 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
In an era when too many films bludgeon you with exposition, desperately afraid of leaving anyone behind, Neil LaBute says as much with what he refuses to tell you as he does with his words. His blistering 1997 debut IN THE COMPANY OF MEN explored corporate and interpersonal power games without ever naming the company, its product, or the city in which it was located. In so doing, he gave the story an uncomfortable sense of generic familiarity. Now comes YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS, a tale of the complicated social and sexual dynamics between six urbanites: college drama teacher Jerry (Ben Stiller); his live-in girlfriend Terri (Catherine Keener); he best friend Barry (Aaron Eckhart); Barry's wife Mary (Amy Brenneman); their womanizing pal Cary (Jason Patric); and artist's assistant Cheri (Nastassja Kinski).
Chuckle at the rhyming name conceit if you will, but that would only be your most immediate reaction if you saw them in the closing credits. You'd spend a bit more time puzzling over the realization that not a single one of those names was ever spoken during the film. For all the memorable conversations LaBute gives to his characters, YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS is really about failure in communication, a failure at achieving any semblance of intimacy. Cary prepares for his sexual encounters by rehearsing his pillow talk into a tape recorder; Terri berates Jerry for "breaking [her] concentration" by talking during sex; Barry and Mary find themselves unable to talk about their sexual dysfunction problems, leading to Mary seeking comfort from another man. Despite the friendship or love which ostensibly is between them, these six people treat each other like strangers, as though they don't even know each other's names.
It's a premise just as provocative as that of IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, but it's not executed with quite the same skill. IN THE COMPANY OF MEN was an example of clockwork plotting, leading a viewer to a powerful conclusion in which everything that preceded it suddenly took on greater resonance. YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS is more pure character study, less concerned with where the characters are going than with where they are. The few bits of unique composition LaBute includes, specifically a recurring scene in an art gallery where only the characters change, are more self-consciously clever than revelatory. As intriguing and often darkly comic as YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS may be, it doesn't entirely satisfy as a narrative. It's more like a slice of domestic life sliced off with the razor of LaBute's caustic words -- Altman's SHORT CUTS as written by David Mamet.
That still makes YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS a cut above the competition, particularly as a showcase for its cast. Jason Patric sinks his teeth into the showiest role, the baldly self-absorbed Cary, delivering one monologue about participating in a sexual assault with a frightening tenderness. Aaron Eckhart, the callow Chad from IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, is almost unrecognizable as the paunchy cuckold who believes that he has been his own most satisfying sexual partner. The women fare less well, with Amy Brenneman a puzzlement as the unhappy Mary, but every one of the six principal performers has at least one gripping moment. YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS isn't the icy triumph IN THE COMPANY OF MEN was, but it continues Neil LaBute's unflinching, unnerving examination of language as assault, of every human interaction as a power struggle. He says all the things we're generally unwilling to admit we say...and, sometimes, the things we don't say.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 dropped names: 8.
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