AN AFFAIR THAT'S ALL IN THE FAMILY

By John Anderson

(Newsday, 1992)

A kind of parable about the current state of world sexuality, "Close My Eyes" contains a lot of smoke and very little heat. And that's the point. In the age of AIDS, sex is no longer seen as the canvas upon which our physicality expresses itself. It's become one more messy bodily function.

And what better way to illustrate this than through an illicit affair (it's certainly not a romance) between a brother and sister? We watch the sex scenes between Natalie (Saskia Reeves) and her brother Richard (Clive Owen) with a mixture of clinical detachment and amazement, because their position has a certain twisted logic: What safer sex could there be, after all, than sex with a sibling?

Of course, when they make love with the television on, our eyes tend to wander to the cricket match, and that's symptomatic of "Close My Eyes," which despite being brave is short on dramatic momentum. Natalie and Richard's violation of the so-called last taboo makes them less than sympathetic, as does the fact that she's cuckolding Alan Rickman, who, between hamming it up in movies like "Robin Hood," makes smaller British films like this to show what an excellent actor he is.

The characters Natalie and Richard are less than winning. When we meet them, it's 1985, and Natalie, the older of the two, wears bad shoes and a ratty fur, and her hair and her life are a mess; Richard is a rather happy fellow pursuing an architectural career. We see them again two years later, and Natalie is still a miserable wretch, and the confident Richard is going off to work in Scotland.

Two more years pass, and their roles have reversed somewhat. Neither is particularly happy - Richard is disillusioned by the greed of the developers with whom he's worked - but Natalie is financially secure, having married "some boring guy" as Richard describes him. But he's not boring at all: Sinclair (Rickman) is smart, rich, charming although he talks too much, and completely overwhelms the insecure Natalie. She drifts toward her brother because he's such a lost soul, and the two become embroiled in their torrid physical affair.

"And to think," Richard says, "we never really liked each other as kids."

"I'd hate to have a real affair," Natalie says, "with lies, deceit and all that."

While Natalie uses Richard - she keeps saying "Stop me, stop me" while arranging for the two of them to meet clandestinely - Richard is really smitten. His work with an environmental agency is a losing game - director Stephen Poliakoff keeps scanning the crassly overbuilt London skyline, with it's vulture-like construction cranes - and Natalie becomes his crutch. His boss at the agency has AIDS, and between the work and Natalie and his betrayal of the quite decent Sinclair, Richard is ready to go over the edge.

"Close My Eyes" is a thought-provoking film, and a timely one. But Rickman is really the reason to see this - and any other film in which he happens to appear.

 

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page