Sorry, that sounded snippy. When I scanned upthread it didn't seem sure if that had made it from one medium to the other. I was so busy laughing (IMDB has the movie listed as a comedy!) at the reactions of the guys she passed that I may have tuned that out.

I thought it was a very unstagey adaptation, all told. Some of the staccato tempo reminded me of theatre (lots of one word responses), but not definitively so. It would have taken me until late in the movie to guess it was from a play. Unlike, say, a Jeffrey.

I didn't read you as snippy at all, so no worries.

But does she in the movie?

In the movie the last shot is her stepping out into traffic. I think they leave it kind of ambiguous what happens then.

I found it totally stagy. Or the dialogue anyway...

I had no idea that she dies in the play, and didn't twig to any hints of it in the film either. I may have been to busy watching Natalie Portman walk down the street though.

I thought Clive Owen was fabulous. There was a masculine maturity about him that you don't often see in Hollywood actors.

Masculine maturity--what a perfect description!

I found it totally stagy. Or the dialogue anyway...

What irks me about adaptations tends to be less in the actual dialogue, and more in how it's delivered. Which drives me nuts, because ... these are most likely movie actors -- why they gotta project for a theatre all of a sudden?

Also, the locations were sufficiently intercut that I didn't feel like I was waiting for scenery changes inbetween interactions.

I did not like Julia Roberts' character -- don't know if it was her or the role, but even as I couldn't respect Dan, I could get what drew women to him. Anna? A million times not.

Should I see Closer today? Is it worth it?

I ... enjoy's not the right word, but I'm glad I saw it. I liked it.

I am very much with ita on the Closer response. Enjoy is NOT the correct word, but it is worth seeing.

I also found the adaptation pretty un-stagey in many ways. I mean, the dialogue felt like a play, but it wasn't a Wait Until Dark straight-up stage-to-screen movement, either. There were lots of sets.

I don't think that Alice is guaranteed to have died. In fact, until I found out she died in the play, I didn't even see it as a possibility. Sure, she's walking out into traffic, but it's exactly the same thing she did in the first scene of the movie. The vibe I got was that Alice was basically unchanged by the events of the movie, a catalyst for the changes of the others. Really, her situation is exactly like it was at the beginning of the film: she's hot, she's walking down a street and guys are staring, she's ignoring the world around her enough to put herself into idiotic danger. She ran to a new city to get away from a guy she once loved and no longer loved. For her, everything was exactly the same. That's all the last scene drove into my head. That, and, "Yes, we the filmmakers are aware that Natalie Portman is incredibly fucking hot."