The scene takes place in a strip club. An exotic dancer is stripping for a customer in a private room. And yet, it has almost nothing to do with sex and everything to do with heartbreak and bitterness. One could say the same about the entirety of Mike Nichols’s 2004 melodrama Closer, in which two couples switch partners, cheat with one another, and use each other as weapons for revenge. Clive Owen plays Larry, a sour dermatologist who hurls verbal abuse at his girlfriend-turned-wife Anna (Julia Roberts) when she leaves him for Dan (Jude Law). Meanwhile, Dan’s jilted girlfriend Alice (Natalie Portman) returns to exotic dancing with an icy practicality that is well beyond her years. One night, dazed by the rage of being abandoned, Larry stumbles into the strip club where Alice works and asks for a private dance. Their scene together is tense, occasionally sexy, and ultimately unfulfilling in almost every way.
Alice is playful and flinty. Larry is a seething ball of pent-up pain and fury. As she stands on the table in front of him after stripping, he tells her he loves her, to which she replies, “Thank you.” A conversation ensues that resembles an interrogation. He alternates between accusing her of being a liar, begging her for intimacy, and asking for something truthful. She playfully deflects, saying that lying is the most fun a woman can have without taking her clothes off. He tells her he loves everything about her that hurts. She tells him he can’t cry in the private room. Finally, he gives up and tells her to bend over. Depending on how you feel about the characters in this movie, this scene is either heartbreaking or further confirmation of their rottenness.
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