The Business of Strangers
***1/2
Cinema Releases - May 3, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. 84
minutes. Written and directed by Patrick Stenner. Starring Stockard Channing,
Julia Stiles, Frederick Weller, Mary Testa, Jack Hallett, Marcus Giamatti,
Buddy Fitzpatrick, Salem Ludwig.
"The Business of Strangers" doesn't
teach us a whole lot, but while watching it, we're involved. It's a forcefully
made picture about two businesswomen -- one young (Julia Stiles), one older
(Stockard Channing) -- and the way they talk to each other and deal with
a dark situation over the course of one long evening.
Channing plays a high-level marketing exec who
spends most of her time on the road, in executive suites, rented boardrooms,
airport lobbies. Stiles plays a writer working as an agency secretary to
pay the bills -- she shows up for a meeting with Channing and gets instantly
fired for being late, but afterward runs into her at the hotel, and gets
to chatting.
The women go to the gym, walk around lobbies,
goof around in the elevator -- they've got nothing better to do with the
evening, so they keep each other company. They wind up at the hotel bar,
and one of Channing's colleagues, a man of sleazy pizzazz played by Frederick
Weller, sits down with them. Stiles gets Channing in private and relates
that she too knows this guy, from an unwholesome past incident. And in a
chapter that is filmed without too much outward aggression but feels frustrated
and angry as hell, the women work together to settle the
score.
The specifics of the plot are not as important
as the dynamics they create between the two main players. At first Stiles
and Channing have a certain cooperative rapport; later they challenge each
other, using words as weapons. The Stiles character has a way of cutting
through, making people uneasy -- she pours out sassy and direct words while
seeming eerily controlled and toying. Channing does not go unaffected by
these games, but she is able to respond -- she's not a fool, she's certainly
experienced at dealing with people, and her way of seeing through Stiles
and defining her behaviour in words throws things back in the girl's face
and keeps the tables turning.
It's all about the different ways these women
use power, and their dogged attempts to master the art of control for the
egocentric sake of it. They're both obsessed with gaining the upper hand
in every conversation, through subtle turns of phrase, implication and
provocation. It's fascinating to watch; these are actresses of intensity
and they sizzle on the screen. Stiles is strangely beautiful and commanding
-- her effect is right in our faces while she herself seems distant. Channing
retains a certain weariness while carrying herself with assuredness and tackling
the curveballs that are thrown her way.
"The Business of Strangers" is thematically and
structurally insubstantial -- it runs for 84 minutes and feels like a short
story, relaying the simple message that while Channing might have retained
human feelings in her climb up the corporate ladder, she's nonetheless lost
personality and meaning. What makes the film powerful is a strikingly cold,
high-tech visual style, and dialogue of extraordinary rhythm that lets brutality
rage under the surface.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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