RELATIONSHIPS are a messy business, painfully so in Mike Nichols's elegant and eloquent film version of Patrick Marbers' award-winning stage play, adapted for the screen by the writer himself.

Love affairs, forged in the white heat of lust, are extinguished just as quickly by a fleeting glance from a beautiful stranger.

And the act of falling in love - that sickening leap of faith, of surrendering entirely to another person - is much more exhilarating and satisfying than actually being in love.

Dan (Jude Law), who co-writes the obituaries column for a major London newspaper, happens to meet stripper Alice (Natalie Portman), when she is almost run over crossing the road.

The pair strike up a flirtatious repartee. They soon become a couple and Dan translates his experiences with the pretty American into a novel.

During the shoot for the image on the book jacket, Dan finds himself attracted to the photographer, Anna (Julia Roberts), also an American, who rebuffs his advances.

A trick played by Dan then brings Anna together with Larry (Clive Owen), a dermatologist in one of the capital's overrun hospitals, who becomes her boyfriend.

The sexual charge between Anna and Dan proves too great, however, setting in motion a chain of events which sees these four characters continually cross paths and rebound in unexpected directions.

Closer is a film in which all of the fireworks are verbal.

There's scant opportunity for director Nichols to impose any of his own personality on the film; he simply has to remain focused tightly on the characters as they wriggle from one uncomfortable revelation to the next.

The actors are extremely impressive.

Roberts brings a palpable fragility to Anna; her centre-piece scene, in which she nervously attempts to break up with Larry, is riveting for her obvious discomfort and guilt.

Law's pretty boy novelist is the least endearing of the quartet - vain, insensitive, spiteful, manipulative - but his unsympathetic portrayal makes Dan's inevitable comeuppance all the more delicious.

Portman continues her fine body of work with a scintillating performance as a woman attuned to the power of her sexuality.

Best of all is Owen, who played Dan in the original 1997 stage production.

As the Neanderthal, sex-driven doc, he blazes brilliantly across every frame of the screen, evidently relishing every loaded syllable of Marber's screenplay.

He's a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination. Everyone loves a cuckold who fights back.

Damon Smith