When Julia met Jude

Closer. In Los Angeles, it's the word on everyone's lips. While most expected the season's prestige films to be expensive epics such as Alexander or The Phantom of the Opera, all the glitter has been grabbed by Closer, a sexy four-hander based on Patrick Marber's 1997 National Theatre hit. Critics love it, the US is blanketed by seductive TV ads and posters, and Oscar talk is starting to buzz.

Just look at the cast. Julia Roberts as Anna, Jude Law as Dan, Nathalie Portman as Alice, Clive Owen as Larry. Roberts, who replaced a pregnant Cate Blanchett, tranformed early perceptions of the movie from high art to Hollywood event. The happy-headline news that Roberts had twins last weekend will be a box-office booster when the film opens in the US this weekend.

As anyone who saw Marber's play in any of its 100 international productions knows, Closer is no Pretty Woman. Director Mike Nichols and Marber, who wrote the screenplay, have stayed true to its bitter web of jealousy and lies. Audiences have come out of early screenings shocked at the sexual frankness of the dialogue - although there are no sex scenes - and by the stunning nastiness inflicted by the characters on each other.

"It's not all nasty. There are a lot of nice things in it," laughed Marber when I saw him last week. "Law and Portman are very tender with each other when they first meet, but one forgets that because it all turns out nasty."

The film begins and ends with Damien Rice singing The Blower's Daughter, as Portman strides in slow motion through the streets of London and, later, New York. That closing scene is the only glimpse of America. The rest of the film is set in London. Alice (Portman) bumps into Dan (Law) and they hit it off. Four years later, they are living together and he is plotting infidelity with a photographer, Anna (Roberts), who falls instead for Larry (Owen) and marries him. Two years later, Anna leaves Larry for Dan and Dan leaves Alice for Anna. That's when the unpleasantness starts.

"It's about things that go on behind closed doors, and some people react and say that it's not like that," says Owen. "I would argue that anyone of a certain age who has been through relationships will relate to it." Changes have been made: Portman's character doesn't die in the film. " Marber and I both felt the ending of the play was too schematic," says Nichols. "We shot it and we looked at it and it didn't seem to be the end of the story we were telling. Most of all, I like to see Nathalie at the end, free but lost."

"We wanted a sliver of optimism at the finish," adds Marber.

It was also decided not to ask Portman and Roberts to attempt an English accent. To hear Julia Roberts use the expression "do you fancy her?" adds a certain frisson. "For me, whether the characters are American, Dutch or Swedish is irrelevant," says Marber. "There are lots of Americans in London-as we know, and it was never an issue for us. It was the international language of love and sex and slang."

Owen was recast as Larry, having played Dan on the UK stage. "Jude was already cast," says Owen, "and the fact that it was seven years since I had played Dan means I don't think I would have been able to play him."

Law sees his role as a companion piece to Alfie, another character who is cavalier with the affections of women. "They complemented each other," he says, adding that he took on Alfie only after he knew he was starring in Closer. "One was a showy view of a young man's sexual life and Closer is very much the underbelly." Roberts and Law acquit themselves well, but it is Owen and Portman who shine. Portman, so trapped by make-up and action in the latest Star Wars trilogy, is an unfettered revelation as the free-spirited stripper Alice, although Nichols dropped a scene in which she was seen topless at work.

"Mike and I made an agreement that we would both give our all and so I said I'd do everything," says Portman, "just so long as we talked about it afterwards. We shot with nudity and we shot without. When he showed it to me I didn't think it was fitting into the film because you don't see any sex in the rest of the film, so one flash might seem out of place. I said I thought it was gratuitous and he said okay, that was our deal, and he kept his word and took it out."