Review: Your Friends and Neighbors
"A Kubrickian examination of depravity," was how Premiere magazine described Neil LaBute's debut, In the Company of Men. Not being an enthusiast of director Stanley Kubrick's cold, clinical style, I was initially wary of LaBute's controversial film. However, the tale of two men making a pact to romance then dump a deaf-mute for their own amusement proved to be an exhilaratingly malevolent ride.
The Kubrickian element, slightly disguised by the darkly comedic aspects in In the Company of Men, is in full view in LaBute's sophomore effort, Your Friends and Neighbors. Billed as a modern immorality tale, the film centers on the sexual roundelay of an incestuous clan of friends. Jason Patric plays a fierce womanizer who is friends with Aaron Eckhart, a pushover puppy whose wife, played by Amy Brenneman, is coveted by Ben Stiller, a drama teacher whose chic bohemian girlfriend, portrayed by Catherine Keener, is taken with an artist's assistant played by Nastassja Kinski. The characters remain nameless throughout the film to enhance the universality of the piece: these characters could be any one of us.
The film begins with a triptych of vignettes. Patric, glistening with sexual sweat, puffs, "I feel special coming inside you." Then he stops and it's revealed that he's only practicing and timing and recording his coital talk to make sure it sounds sincere. Cut to Stiller who tells his students after performing a ribald play, "Love and language aside, it's just men and women." Later, we see him taking Keener from behind. Keener, irritated by his ceaseless talk, snaps, "Let's just do it. I don't need the narration." Cut to Eckhart, at work and on a lunch break with a colleague, discussing the best sex partner he's ever had -- himself. His wife is great, he concedes, "but she's just not me." And so it goes.
It's very difficult to criticize LaBute's film. I neither loved nor hated Your Friends and Neighbors; rather, I like that I am still mulling it over. LaBute offers questions and situations, but he does not answer or resolve them. You could spend a lifetime asking why this and why that but never come close to a satisfying answer. LaBute's films are rhetorical anatomies of emotional violence, of the way men and women hurt each other.
In the Company of Men used words as weapons; in Your Friends and Neighbors, words hang men. It's amusing -- men are talking, communicating, saying all the sentiments women have been telling them for years to say. And the women can't stand it. "Please don't say any more." "The silence. When we were making love, you were quiet." "It's not a time for sharing." All of these lines are spoken by women, either in fear or indignation. One scene has Stiller address the issue: he does everything she wants and she still isn't satisfied. To which Keener replies, "I know."
Cinematically, LaBute has improved slightly. A bigger budget (In the Company of Men cost $250,000) has afforded him a chance to have the camera pan to the side or snake through a bookstore. On the whole, the camera remains stationary and distant, preferring to dissect from afar. This technique, as well as a barely existent soundtrack, sharpens our focus on the words and the actors and their streamlined surroundings. (Some of the surroundings are quite telling: a painting of a grotesquely exposed mouth in Kinski's gallery, a barely defined painting of a (fe)male figure fading into black in Patric's apartment, a photograph of Abraham Lincoln in a bookstore that proceeds a chilling confrontation between Keener and Patric.)
Kinski, with her drowsy beauty, plays her character's childlike and sophisticated sides with conviction. Brenneman possesses a shattering vulnerability -- even at the character's happiest moments, there's a sizable depth of misery waiting to overflow. Keener, who in a span of six years has established herself as one of the best actresses working today, is commandingly prickly.
Stiller continues to impress while Eckhart cements his potential. He played the snake charmer to the hilt in LaBute's debut; his portrayal was so effective that viewers who met him told him they hated him. There's nary a trace of the monster in Your Friends and Neighbors. Instead, we have an oafish, immensely sympathetic character. When he confronts Brenneman about her infidelity, it's hard to side with anyone -- both exude tremendous pain.
Patric's performance is problematic and I believe it has more to do with him rather than the character. Patric is neither saddled by his leading man looks nor devoid of talent. What he lacks is a solid presence; he always seems to be receding into himself so the effort of portraying a hostile ladykiller is quite pronounced. However, he does nail two very important scenes. One is a confrontation with Keener which goes from innocuous to threatening in a heartbeat. The other is a lengthy monologue in a steam room as he recounts his most memorable lay. The camera moves in tentatively as he becomes lost in the reverie of his own monstrosity. The effect is that of peeling a human's skin to reveal the skeleton underneath.
Your Friends and Neighbors
Directed by: Neil LaBute
Written by: Neil LaBute
Starring: Amy Brenneman, Aaron Eckhart, Catherine Keener, Nastassja Kinski, Jason Patric, Ben Stiller
