YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS
If you’re a masochist you will love "Your Friends and Neighbors." I am not. I found most of the movie painful to sit through, but not for reasons you might think.
Neil LaBute’s follow-up to "In the Company of Men" is a whinefest that gives sour samplings of sexually dysfunctional flavors in two groupings: Mary, Barry, Cary, and Terry, Jerry, and Cheri. All the flavors are mixed and matched in a bed swapping game in search of some unattainable taste of sexual nirvana. Nobody’s palette is satisfied but the pay-off scene at the end of the "YF&N" gives the illusion that two - one from each grouping - are. And the sadist and masochist live happily ever after! Except for some brilliant moments that belong to Jason Patric, the road to this final commingling is often tedious and condescending.
The in-joke in "YF&N" is that LaBute’s characters are not supposed to be real people. They are the exaggerated by-products of affluence and the sexual revolution - boredom and loveless sex. "It’s all about fucking", says Jerry right from the outset. "YF&N" is also about getting ‘fucked’ - emotionally and psychologically. Unfortunately I feel like the audience is as much a victim of LaBute’s high-minded intent as the characters in his movie. The distance of several weeks between seeing "YF&N" and writing this piece has led me to this feeling.
I got a sense that anyone who laughs at the foibles of LaBute’s creations does so out of a false sense of moral superiority. It’s a case of ‘anyone without sin’ casting the first stone. Each laugh is a stone of condemnation. If "YF&N" succeeds at all, it’s making each stone thrower feel the twinge of his(her) own guilt particularly in the scene that symbolically uses a steam bath as a confessional in a game of Truth and(not ‘or’) Consequences.
Up until the confession that is the centerpiece of "YF&N", I was lulled into indifference. So, with some irony, I am surprised at how much of Neil LaBute’s follow-up to "In the Company of Men" has stayed with me. I must confess that I’m not really sure if it has to do with a unique vision, or his ability to draw on other sources, whether consciously or unconsciously, and distort them enough to make them unrecognizable. For instance, the undercurrent that keeps "YF&N" flowing is similar to "The Group", an early Sidney Lumet movie based on the acclaimed Mary McCarthy novel. The plot mechanics depict the lifelong devastating effects that one woman’s sexual attitudes towards men have on her prep school peers in the mid fifties. In a gender reversal, the sexual inadequacies of two of LaBute’s men are affected by a third whose macho posturing is the standard they use for sexual conquest. In some other weird way, part of "YF&N" is also like the game of Clue. As each character flaw is revealed, the game brings you closer to the truth about the culprit responsible for the attitudes of the others, just like in "The Group." Instead of showing them floundering in the outside world, like McCarthy’s women, LaBute shows them screwing up, not screwing, in the bedroom. While McCarthy, the author, and Lumet, the director, show flesh and blood creatures, LaBute resorts to bloated caricatures to make his points. However, unlike McCarthy’s Lakey Eastlake, LaBute’s dominant male never comes to terms with his own sexuality.
On the other hand, LaBute is more sympathetic to the women, if sympathetic is the right word. They seem to know what they want, but not how to get it. One wants to be held, the second wants her lover to shut up, and the third satisfies the bisexuality of the second but has the same traits as her male counterpart.
The biggest weakness in "YF&N" is the failure to flesh out everyone except the vilest character. His friends and neighbors are merely game pieces used to reflect his influence. His triumph at the end of "Your Friends and Neighbors" reinforces this notion.
This triumph of evil and Neil LaBute’s deadpan approach to the human condition as style could make him the heir apparent to Luis Bunuel. The obsessions given life in movies like "El", "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz" and the more popular "Viridiana" and "Tristana" are no less vile than those in "Your Friends and Neighbors."
The difference is that Bunuel made you feel compassion for his victims while LaBute tries to make them laughable. If LaBute can fuse his mordant humor with compassion for the victims in his work and instill guilt as the price of laughter, like the best of Bunuel, then Neil will cease to be the flavor of the month and become an artistic force to be reckoned with.
Movies with similar themes and motifs:
"In the Company of Men" (1997) - Neil LaBute's
Sundance favorite
"The Ice Storm"(1997) - Dir: Ang Lee
"Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice"(1969)
- Dir./Scr. Paul Mazursky.
"La
Ronde" (Fr. 1950) - Dir./Scr. Max Ophuls
The best of Luis Bunuel and sexual obsession -
If you can find them. He wrote and directed them.
"El" (Eng. Titles: "He" / "This
Strange Passion")(1952)
"The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz"(1955)
"Viridiana"(1961)
"Tristana"(1970)
"Belle de Jour"(1967)(recently re-mastered
for video)