A bit about me - I love the cinema. From the latest blockbuster (dragged along by my 15 year old so...
A bit about me - I love the cinema. From the latest blockbuster (dragged along by my 15 year old son), to my preferred arthouse films, I just enjoy the experience.
Update (May 2005) - my son is 19 and at Uni now! How time flies...
Member since:12.02.2001
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"Your friends and neighbors" is director Neil LaBute's second film, following on from "In the company of men". In essence it's about relationships between men and women.
But it's not a romantic comedy kind of take on relationships, not at all - this movie is more about how bleak relationships can be - and that probably applies to friends as well as lovers. OK, it;s a bleak look at relationships, but with some added humour, so that it's not completely depressing.
We are introduced to 6 main characters - well, actually they are the only characters in the movie... others appear in the background, but no-one apart from the 6 main characters has any dialogue whatsoever. These 6 characters are: 3 men and 3 women - a married couple, a couple living together, and two single people, a man and a woman.
The married couple Mary and Barry, played by Amy Brenneman and "In the company of men" star, Aaron Eckhart, look from the outside to be a happy couple - ah, but looks are not everything, and things are not what they seem.
Ben Stiller plays a self-obsessed drama teacher, Jerry. This roles is miles apart from his usual type of role - Stiller is most famous for comedy roles ("There's something about Mary", "Meet the Fockers", "Zoolander") but here he shows he can play a dramatic role. The character is an immensely unlikeable one, a sort of academic Woody Allen clone, and again, in this quite unusual for him.
Catherine Keener plays Terri, his partner, who is driven mad by him most of the time, it appears - mainly by the fact he talks constantly and has to analyse everything. She works in advertising herself. I've always admired her acting (from the glamorous office worker in "Being John Malkovitch" to the meek girlfriend in "The 40 year old virgin" - incidentally she is the only good thing in that particular movie!).
Jason Patric plays Cary, another self-obsessed character, but he's self-obsessed in a far more sinister kind of way - he's a doctor who seems to hate women as much as he loves himself. Understandably, when you get see him, he's one of the single characters.
Nastassja Kinski plays Cheri, an artist's assistant and the nearest thing the movie has to a decent kind of character that we could maybe empathise with.
One of the most interesting aspects of the movie, for me, is the way that we see the other characters all visiting the art gallery where she works, they have pretty much the same lines each time, although of course each conversation develops differently and there are different consequences with each two people.
There are some good quotes, such as:
"Love's a disease."
"Yeah, but it's curable."
Which, coming from people who, when asked how they are, tend to say "Great, couldn't be better," with a bi smile - probably sums it all up.
On the face of it "Your friends and neighbors" looks like a moral tale, with people having to pay for their indiscretions. But it doesn't, to me, come across as a worthwhile moral tale, if you know what I mean. There's definitely an underlying cruelty in a lot of the characters, and in the end, I kept thinking - what was the point of it all?
It's more than a standard tale of Americans hanging out and chatting in restaurants or in locker rooms, having affairs and talking about them. Perhaps the irony is that people don't talk a lot but don't communicate properly?
If you like any of the actors, it may be worth seeing, but otherwise, movies like "La Ronde" prove that it's all been said before.
The DVD is a very reasonable £7.97 on amazon.co.uk, Extras: The director's commentary - worth listening to as it does offer some genuine insight into the moviemaking process (e.g. the reasons why no-one except the 6 main characters even gets to speak; the choice of music; input of the actors) Trailer So not many extras, but the commentary is better than most.
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![Your Friends And Neighbours [DVD] [1998]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78488560.jpg "Your Friends And Neighbours [DVD] [1998]")
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