The Business of Strangers

Rating:
Summary: Dark Comedy With A Purpose
Review: Amidst a slew of conventional films unleashed upon the general public lately, 'The Business of Strangers' boldly stands out as disturbing and unpleasant. A welcome change to cookie-cutter endings and bland acting, this unique character study follows two women (Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles) and their brief night's stay at a hotel. The film boasts hardly any scenes before or after either character's stay, which explains its brevity. At a trim 84 minutes, the story is not bogged down by the women's history or future - just the immediacy of the women's, shall we say...situation. At first, a seemingly pointless girl-power trip becomes a bold and diverse journey into the mind of two power-hungry but sensitive females. To reveal any more plot detail would be spoiling the viewer's experience - just know that 'The Business of Strangers' is not what's expected. It's a thought out film with an intricately woven story - a rarity these days.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty slow but well done
Review: Good acting, good filmmaking, some weakness in the screenplay make it a bit slow. It's not a masterpiece but a good little movie.

Rating:
Summary: Channing burns, Stiles is hot; still, "Business" is lukewarm
Review: Set in a world of emptiness and loneliness (have you ever seen an airport so barren?), "The Business of Strangers" is one of those instances where a film would probably work better as a stage play. It's small cast and finite settings would work well in a theatre, but waste the vast potential that cinema has to offer. The only stage characteristic it's lacking is depth.

That being said, it is a film. What are its merits as such?

In a story such as this, where a young free spirit encounters a middle-aged corporate lifer, the tendency is for the audience to be made to empathize with the younger character. What "The Business of Strangers" does best is to reverse this cliche. Witness an early scene in an elevator. Paula (Julia Stiles) notices the leers of the men around her, and decides to play that she and Julie (Stockard Channing) have just come from a problematic lovemaking session. Usually, under these circumstances, Julie would become flustered and later scold Paula for her embarrassment. But not here. Instead, after a moment of contemplation (you can see Channing weighing the pros and cons of jumping in), she turns on her quick wit and give as good as she gets. It's the first moment where the audience feels unbalanced, like the movie might actually have something new and provocative to say. This unbalance, which is a true joy when it comes up, only reappears in spurts; the rest of the movie is an uneven blend of the banal and the sublime.

Julia Stiles, for the most part, is good in her role as an uninhibited young writer, working in a "money job" temporarily to pay her bills. She never softens Paula; she's unwilling to give in to the temptation to make this mostly despicable character sympathetic. Kudos to Stiles for that. Unfortunately, she has momentary lapses of craft where a subtle moment is botched, played broadly and artificially. It's startling, enough to take the audience out of the voyeuristic experience of watching someone's reality, making them realize that it's only a flawed movie.

Stockard Channing, as the yin to Stiles' yang, is dead-on perfect. She's never filmed from a flattering angle and never well lit. It's certainly not a glamorous part. Julie, on the brink of the ultimate success of her career, has little or no success in her personal life. Her secretary is her best friend. Her ex-husband is 12 years gone, remarried with children. Her own maternal longing keeps rearing its ugly head. And her happiness is regulated through a Zoloft-heavy chemical regimen. Even with all that, Channing still comes across as luminous, strong, dominant, and in control. She says that repressing her happiness for the sake of her career was her choice, and she's not bitter about it. Usually, you don't believe someone when they say this. But you do here. The character is complex, and Channing is up to the challenge of making her real. Julie makes strong choices repeatedly in playing Paula's head games. And even though she is scared and nearly trumped on several occasions, she has enough resolve to save face time and time again. Channing gets full credit for making this tired little exercise nearly a pretty good movie.

Blame, I feel, goes to writer/director Patrick Stettner. His first full-length feature certainly aims for relevance, but it falls short. He tries to say something about the corporate workplace, women's place in it, relationships between men and women, sexual assault, sexual liberation, chemical dependence, rebellion, wasted youth, and repressed happiness. But he spreads himself too thin, never gathering up enough steam to make a relevant point on any of these topics. The dreamy way he plays some scenes was distracting, in that it undercut their reality. And the musical score he chooses feels like it was ripped off wholesale from "American Beauty".

Stettner's only strength is in his casting. For all her flaws, Stiles is still quite good. Channing, while being head and shoulders above everything else in this film, still manages to fit in nicely. These two women, with their fine chemistry together, make the film worthwhile.

Rating:
Summary: Harsh Biting review of Women in Business
Review: The movie is a portrait of two women who embrace their masculinity in order to make it in a man's world, business. At least that is how I see the movie. The two women meet, when Stockard Channing's character has the one up position over Julia Stiles's character. As the movie progresses, the two women try to achieve a balance of power between each other but their inability to trust gets in the way. It is a sad movie in that the women can't really seem to bond as you wish they could. Stiles's character keeps pushing the enevelope seeing how far she can go with Channing. Channing bites the hook for awhile and releases some powerful anger on another male character, who in my eyes seems purely an innocent bystander to these two women's agendas. The ending is strange and thought provoking. This masculine world in which these two women occupy, is it worth it? What about Stiles character, we see the picture she took of herself, doesn't it look lost and alone? Didn't Stiles say she didn't have any friends? Didn't Stiles character act oddly when she was making out with that guy from the bar? It makes you wonder if men have played the upper hand with her as of course they had with Channing's character. In business, you have to take alot of s@@@ from men. I know I've been there, no offense to all the men who read this. To me this movie shows lonliness, isolation, remember the scene of Channing talking to her therapist on the phone. No time to actually be face to face. How sad! The movie shows metal,technology and bright glaring light as a symbol for this artificial happiness and aloneness. The women can't really be friends because of their life choices. Stiles leaves Channing with a memento of their night together and it seems touching in a way, at least to Channing, she doesn't seem offended. To those planning to see the movie, it has some intense scenes, the violence is not bloody but it is violence none the less. Those who like a happy upbeat film, this is definately not for you. It is dark and sadly touching. I got alot from the film. I am still thinking about it, I feel sad for the loss of feminism that takes place in the cold hard heart of business in the city. Time to watch some Ally McBeal.

Lisa Nary