9. Your Friends & Neighbors (Dir. Neil LaBute, 1998)
Neil LaButes follow up to the acerbic
In the Company of Men is a similarly vicious look at relationship politics and the murky depravity of misogynistic ineffective men. There is also great dialogue delivered by a great cast giving sublime performances. The plot is essentially revolved around three friends: Barry (Aaron Eckhart), Jerry (Ben Stiller) and Cary (Jason Patric). They meet for drinks and workout together and share their warped experiences and expectations of sexual politics. Barry and Jerry are in relationships where the spark has been long extinguished and Cary drifts between vapid one night stand after the other. The trios friendship (more acquaintance as the men are completely emotionally bankrupt) comes under strain when Jerry begins an affair with Barrys wife Mary (Amy Brenneman) while Jerrys girlfriend Terri (Catherine Keener) starts a relationship with an attractive art gallery worker (Nastassja Kinski).
Your Friends & Neighbors has six actors who are all giving sterling work. From the female angle, Keener and Brenneman give emotive intelligent performances as women who cannot find satisfaction or depth with the men in their lives. Brenneman gives a melancholy performance where she repeatedly asks to be held and not to be seen as a giant vagina to Eckharts giant penis. Keener quite literally gives up on men and embarks a lesbian relationship with Kinski. But the film is all about the men and their nefariousness. Eckhart is almost unrecognisable as the affable but self-involved and dim-witted Barry. Ben Stiller, in an unusually straight dramatic role, also gives a great turn. The film however, belongs to Jason Patric - in one of his finest roles plays one of cinemas greatest assholes. He is an extremely shallow misogynist who admits, amongst other things, to having revenge sex with a co-worker who undermined him at work and concocting a fictitious HIV report for a former lover. He is slimy, narcissistic and completely engrossing. Its a performance of fearlessness particularly in a scene where Cary recounts his best sexual encounter a jaw dropper that is worth the price of admission alone. LaBute is less interested in the soap opera relationship squabbles and more interested in the motivations and behaviours of the six morally questionable characters. Carys and Jerrys actions and behaviour is entirely depraved and morally bankrupt but they are not snarling villains. These are very real people doing nasty things that happen every day. LaBute reminds us these warped characters are among us in everyday life. They are indeed our friends and neighbours.