Lummie

28th Feb 2007

Closer (2004)

Question: How did Larry find out what club Alice/Jane works at? Did he just find her there by coincidence?

Answer: It appears so. Nothing else suggested he knew where she worked. More that he was just going to different clubs and drinking and came across the club Alice was working at.

Lummie

I think he knew exactly where to find her. He's a doctor and often doctors are known to have that "God" complex. I think he wanted to gain control of his relationship with Anna. To win Anna back he had to manipulate all the players including Alice/ Jane. He probably researched her and found her. That's why he knew Alice/Jane was not her real name. He was low key stalking all of them, to get Anna back.

At the strip club, Larry does *not* know that her name is legally Jane. He thinks her name is Alice. She is using a stage name at the club, and he wants to hear her say that her name is Alice. He refuses to accept "Jane" as the answer. He is waiting to hear "Alice."

But Jane actually was Alice's legal name. This is shown at the end of the movie, on her ID. Larry did not believe her when she told him.

Answer: Dan wrote the address on his prescription pad and passed it to Larry.

I think you've got it the other way around. Larry found Alice in the strip club, and he gave Dan the address on the prescription pad.

Lummie

12th Feb 2007

Closer (2004)

Question: I don't understand the scene where Alice and Dan break up at the end, and why Alice says that she "would have" loved Dan forever. Did she do this because he tried to trick her into revealing that she slept with Larry, when he knew about it all along?

Answer: When Dan breaks it off with Alice as she cries she tells him the truth. She tells him that it's normally the other way. That she is the one that is supposed to break it off with him. So when they get back together she finally has her chance. Before she was the one that left broken. This time she knew she just wouldn't be. She would be able to walk away and not feel it. Alice doesn't seem like she truly needs anyone. And she lies about herself because she wants the control. Dan had the control over her.

She leaves Dan because she wants him to not care. For it to not be about his ego.

Answer: I think that 'Alice' is at odds with who she really is. Her identity crisis plays out in the way she constantly reinvents herself by changing her appearance. She can not sustain a real relationship with Dan, because she constantly role-plays. I think this is the significance of her lying about her real name. In a moment of truth with Larry, she reveals that she is "Plain Jane", implying that she can only feel special and lovable, and 'in love', when she is playing a role. Dan's narcissistic need to know whether or not she really slept with Larry prompted her regular pattern of breaking off all of her relationships when they get too real.

Answer: In a nutshell Alice broke up with Dan because she knew Dan wouldn't be able to get over the situation with her sleeping with Larry. The statement about loving him forever was more that she loved him but his insistency on knowing the real truth was never going to change. It didn't really have anything to do with tricking her as she had already revealed she didn't want to be with Dan. The fact that he had had to hear it from her probably confirmed her feelings he wouldn't be able to get past the affair.

Lummie

He said to her something like he wanted her to lie to him.

No, it was Anna he wanted to lie, about having slept with Larry to get him to sign the divorce papers. This was the scene at the theater/opera, whatever it was. He says "try lying for a change it's the currency of the world."

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