Your Friends & Neighbors
Director: Neil LaBute. Cast: Ben Stiller, Jason Patric, Catherine Keener, Amy Brenneman, Aaron Eckhart,
Nastassja Kinski. Screenplay: Neil LaBute.
A movie that starts out furious and pretty much ends up that way. Neil LaBute, the sharp-tongued
provocateur behind In the Company of Men this time gets to excoriate the
sexual mores and misbehaviors of everyone, ever, not just the male half of the world. It's nice when a
director grows, I guess, but Your Friends & Neighbors seems a little too bilious, not to mention a
little tonally untempered, to convince anyone that LaBute is as promising a filmmaker as he'd like to be,
or that he has any reason to be so wrapped around the axle about everything.
In the Cheap Shot Awards of 1998, a big statuette will have to go to the director-screenwriter who named
his six urban jungefolk Mary, Barry, Terri, Cheri, Cary, and Jerry. The gesture—which only becomes
apparent in the end credits of the picture, so anonymously do these dried-out souls interact with one
another—makes them all seem absurd, and seems to undermine LaBute's point that they might represent
anything about the rest of the human condition. If my name's not a homonym, may I assume that I'm off the
great big hook of LaBute's cynicism? Let's hope so. At the very least, the echo-style naming underscores
the fact that all of these characters are essentially minor riffs on one another.
Jerry and Terri (Ben Stiller and Catherine Keener) are lovers running on inertia who find that things work
better when they just don't talk to one another. Terri would like to extend this mandate to their carnal
encounters, closing off completely and rolling over with a slew of verbal lacerations as soon as Jerry
starts grunting and exclaiming. He, by contrast, cannot figure out what the big problem is. "I am
accused of speaking" he tells his male pals, in total consternation as to how to address a problem
that, by definition, denies him a way to address anything. Terri just wants everyone to shut up.
Mary, played with a dewy, reserved watchfulness by former NYPD Blue-er Amy Brenneman, only wishes
she had something to say, but seems to be at a permanent loss in understanding the dynamics of her own
marriage, much less the couples around her. Mary's silence seems at least partially attributable to a
recognition on her part that she is neither angry nor bloodthirsty enough to compete with these people.
Barry can't believe his own good luck at having scored such a beautiful, uncomplaining wife. He's so
delighted with the way things have worked out that he can't stop pleasuring himself even when she's gone
to sleep on the other side of the bed; it is with surprising good cheer that he admits to a co-worker that
he has never had a sexual experience as gratifying as those he supplies on his own. Aaron Eckhart, who
ignited In the Company of Men with his cobra-like magnetism, makes an admirable about-face playing
this loser, but it's not a commanding enough performance to really confirm him as a promising talent.
The other two characters in this vicious sextet are the most problematic. Nastassja Kinski's Cheri is an
insipid secretary at an art gallery, or at least that's what she seems to be. Her entree into the picture
is her recurring pattern of hijacking a series of visitors to the gallery—many of Neighbors'
protagonists included—with the same set of curious-bystander questions. This formal aspect of Kinski's
role never allows for much fullness of actual characterization, so this striking beauty is stuck with yet
another role that hides whatever acting gifts she may or may not possess.
Finally, in the film's most discussed role, Jason Patric emerges from the vortex of Speed 2 (at
least he has some reason to be furious) to play a misognynist so hateful that the populace of
LaBute's previous film seem almost demure. The screenplay overreaches in portraying Cary, whom we are
asked to believe is such a villain that his most fondly-remembered sexual release arrived when he helped
gang-rape a feeble male classmate in a high-school gym class. Cary's wickedness seems a bit too extreme to
accept, and Patric's self-conscious "change of pace" approach to playing him doesn't help. We wish all the
more that he had never been conceived.
Don't get me wrong, LaBute's movie keeps moving at an efficient little clip, and more than a few of the
dialogue exchanges are engaging enough even when they don't lead anywhere. Ben Stiller's trademark comic
ditheriness is an interesting ingredient in all the mix, perhaps because he makes Jerry seem aware of both
the deadliness and the absurdity of the goings-on of the plot. Meanwhile, Catherine Keener, the shining
light of Walking and Talking and Tom DiCillo's films, is utterly
riveting. Her Terri, forktongued as she often sounds, is at least relentlessly honest and often even
witty, and Keener's intelligent style—passing all kinds of thoughts across her prominent, off-kilter
features—makes all the difference in showing LaBute's anger by making it seem to come from
somewhere. Terri's rage is, for her, the least of several evils; no one understands her when she
asks for what she wants, and just keeping silent invites all sorts of irritating questions. Being pissed
off all the time is her only solution for being as contented as possible without intrusion or aggravation.
You wouldn't want to have a cup of coffee with her, but you're happy to see her take a few classic stabs
at Patric, and it's an indelible portrait bound to go down as one of the year's best.
Your Friends & Neighbors itself, however, is not even a standout in the context of August, a
famously dry month that doesn't feel any fuller for the addition of this vaguely proficient but hard and
soulless exercise. You couldn't call this picture a sophomore slump, really, especially if like me you
were not convinced by In the Company of Men that LaBute was a budding genius. Your Friends &
Neighbors extends those habits of spitefulness and schematism that are already LaBute's big pitfalls,
while his signal strength of precise dialogue is too rarely put in the service of characters with any
dimension. I'll still be curious to see what LaBute comes up with next, but if it's just another document
of mantis-like men and women who devour each other after mating, I don't think I'm the only viewer who
will stop showing up at his table. Grade: C