Independent film moves into bad neighborhood

If the six principle characters of "Your Friends & Neighbors" were actually your friends and neighbors, it'd be high time for a new social circle and a new address. You'd want to escape the assorted miscommunication, misogyny and misjudgment inflicted upon each other by writer-director Neil Labute's despicable creations.

Similarly, you'll also want to escape Labute's clever and high-minded yet wholly excruciating film.

Labute, responsible for last year's scathingly frank comedy "In the Company of Men," makes his point abundantly clear early on in his latest effort: people everywhere, i.e. your friends and neighbors, are obsessed with sex and will demean and betray whomever they choose to get some.

Courtesy of Universal Pictures Ben Stiller stars in 'Your Friends and Neighbors,' a new film by the creator of 'In the Company of Men.'

This is a valid and sexy point for, say, the Jerry Springer crowd, as all the sexual obsession may amount to the breaking of a chair over any given head. But in Labute's world, this means seemingly endless conversations about the nastiest of comedic subjects.

Witty conversations about sex? A good thing, right? Not exactly, as the generally nameless protagonists (They refer to each other as "You, " or infer identity with "Oh, you're his friend," or defer names altogether with "Please don't mention him now.") are cursed with a severe inability to communicate. though when they do communicate, it is often through funny and sparklingly sadistic repartee.

They talk and talk in the guys' sauna or at the girls' lunch out but mostly have nothing to say to the opposite sex. This makes the awkward gaps in dialogue and pained expressions on faces all that much more realistic, yet all the more unpleasant to experience.

The unpleasantness follows the intertwining lives of two couples: the married, bored pair played by Aaron Eckhart (40 lbs. heavier than in "Men") and Amy Brenneman and the cohabiting, bored pair played by Catherine Keener and Ben Stiller.

Also involved are Nastassja Kinski's comely art gallery assistant and Jason Patric's truly evil OB-GYN.

Eckhart and Brenneman's marrieds are old friends of Stiller and Keener's bickering singles. The film kick starts with a strained dinner party that finds Stiller and Brenneman drawing closer together, Keener growing more and more bitter towards men and Eckhart staying just as recklessly naive to what's going on around him.

Then group then carries on its sexual shenanigans to spite each other with Patric generally offending everyone.

Their stories are neatly tied together by Labute's clever staging in repeated vignettes of the characters studying the same painting in Kinski's gallery. Each of the characters then finds their conversations with Kinski going in different directions.

Keener ends up in bed with Kinski, Patric's pickup attempt gets mercilessly shot down, Eckhart asks if there's a gift shop and Stiller confronts Kinski for bedding his woman.

Courtesy of Gramercy Pictures Nastassja Kinski ties together the lives of "Your Friends & Neighbors" as an art gallery assistant.

Another gimmick used by Labute for narrative cohesion are the characters quizzing each other on the best they've ever had.

In most cases here, the best and worst they've ever had are present and involved with one of their friends or enemies.

As the sex gets hot, or cold as the case may be and the conversation gets hotter, the players are all solid and completely unlikable, as intended, and are working from Labute's deliciously incisive script.

But, again, it is those awkward, supposedly realistic moments in between the refreshingly mean-spirited bits (such as Patric's account of the rape of a male classmate as the best he's ever had and Keener's tirade against the very essence that is Ben Stiller) that make the film suffer.

The aforementioned nasty bits are rather enjoyable, though, for the sly experiment they perform on the audience. The humor is so outlandish and the situations so absurd you often find yourself laughing, then quickly realize what you're laughing at and become disgusted with yourself as a result.

It is understandable and even commendable that Labute experimented with the medium of filmmaking in this purposely uncomfortable fashion: He wants to make us laugh hysterically and then squirm uncontrollably at the atrocity of these horrible John and Jane Does.

If the laughs are few and far between, then there is no shortage of squirms, courtesy of the brilliant performances of Brenneman, who is the very definition of wishy-washy; Keener, whose shallow harpy and her demands for silence during sex are enthralling; and especially the usually wooden Patric, who has found the role of his career in the unfeeling, inconsiderate louse of a doctor.

Labute and company in "Your Friends & Neighbors" have lofty aspirations of making entertainment of the awkward, uncomfortable and everyday, some of which are met. But most of which fall as flat as the fake fetus drop-kicked by Jason Patric midway through the film.

The film does, however, manage one final comedic coup, as it is revealed in the credits that our loathsome friends and neighbors have rhyming names: Mary, Barry, Terri, Cheri, Jerry and Cary.

Pretty darn funny. But moving away from these raunchy, chatty but annoyingly uncommunicative "Neighbors" still seems the best option, whatever their names.

09-11-98