I just wasn't in the mood
Julie (Stockard Channing) is good at her job. She's
spent years climbing the corporate ladder, equally
adept at making faultless presentations and schmoozing
with assholes. And yet, Julie remains unsure of
herself. When, en route to an important pitch meeting,
she learns that her boss is flying in for an
unscheduled one-on-one, she imagines that she's about
to be fired.
During the first few minutes of Patrick Stettner's
The Business of Strangers, you learn a lot
about Julie. She's on the move, traveling first class,
but everywhere she goes looks the same; all the
restaurants, boardrooms, and hotel suites feature the
same bland décor. As Julie click-clicks through a
starkly white airport, Teodoro Maniaci's camera tracks
behind her, then moves around to reveal her game face:
prepared and in control. The problem is, she can never
be sure just what she's prepared for and in control
of, but that is the precise nature of her business,
which is characterized by treachery and tension.
Indeed, minutes after Julie's in-charge intro, things
start to go wrong. She can't get any detailed info on
this upcoming meeting with the boss, then her Big
Presentation goes badly because her new assistant,
Paula (Julia Stiles), arrives 45 minutes late, crucial
power-point equipment in tow. When Julie snipes at
Paula, the girl comes back with her own declaration of
war: Julie is an "uberfrau," too uptight and
merciless. As if to prove the point, Julie takes aim
the best way she knows how: in a fit of frustration
and fear, she fires the girl.
After this multi-layered disaster, everything changes
again: the meeting with the boss, in a sterile airport
café, results in Julie's promotion to CEO. That she
has misinterpreted the situation so colossally
probably says less about Julie than the unreadably
brutal business world she inhabits, but still, it sets
her up for what follows, namely, Paula's increasingly
complicated vengeance plot, which seems part ferocious
spite, part meticulous calculation, and part arty
concoction designed to show off acting chops. But
while The Business of Strangers does make some
room for Channing and Stiles to stretch out, its basic
premise -- the meanness of the business of strangers
-- is worn-out.
Still, the plot itself isn't wholly predictable: when
the women meet again in the hotel bar, they bond over
a few drinks and their shared anger at being pawns in
a men's game, then exorcise their fury against a
smarmy headhunter, Nick (Frederick Weller). But Julie
and Paula don't have that much to say to one another:
locked in mutual melodrama, they eventually reveal
self-incriminating and self-destructive bitterness.
Julie is burdened with the usual motives for her
meanness -- she's divorced, childless (she didn't want
them, which apparently marks her as un-warm, or
perhaps un-generous, in the film's emotional economy),
hard-drinking, and, no surprise, lonely. Paula, still
young and rebellious (at least in her own mind), isn't
quite so immersed in corporate culture, but she's a
natural, both enraged and wily enough to hold her own
against anyone in that environment.
Full of as-yet unfocused cruelty, Paula becomes an
object lesson for Julie, who is, in the midst of her
supposed triumph, looking for a reason not to live the
life she's living. Or, more precisely, she's looking
for a way to test herself, now that she's found her
own judgment to be so disastrously defective. Coming
across Paula later that evening in the hotel bar,
Julie feels guilty and buys her a drink, then offers
to put Paula up in the hotel with her company card. On
their way down to the pool in the elevator, the women
find themselves surrounded by men in suits: Paula
starts a game, apologizing to Julie for... "you know."
As the guys eye them, Paula sighs, "I just wasn't in
the mood." Julie takes the challenge, suggesting
Paula's racist because she was afraid of the
black dildo. Ding: arriving at their floor, the
women exit, pleased that they've so easily titillated
these foolish men.
From here, the movie traces their bonding process:
they drink together in the hotel bar with a series of
anonymous men, until Paula, absent briefly for an
unsatisfying make-out session with some finesse-less
creep, returns to their table to find Julie flirting
with Nick. Here the movie abandons potential
complexities for stereotypes. Paula might be jealous
of Julie or Nick or even of their easy-seeming
relationship (they know each other professionally, but
hardly trust one another -- here they are, as always,
performing to get what they want). The women retire to
Julie's room, where Paula accuses Nick of date-raping
a friend of hers back in college. When he shows up at
the door, drunk and stupid, the women decide to teach
him something, though they're not sure what.
Paula administers a knock-out dose of Julie's valium,
which leaves Nick quite out of the film's central
action -- the women working out their own anxieties
and competitions over his comatose body. Julie and
Paula then get serious with one another, testing the
limits of their new friendship: Julie observes, "It is
all about trust," but it's not really. It's about
power and fear, which are in the same ballpark as
trust, but more difficult to own.
The women are canny enough to move Nick out of Julie's
room before they do anything, dragging him to a
section of the hotel that is -- so symbolically
--under construction. Surrounded by plastic
coversheets and unfinished boards, Julie and Paula
strip him to his boxers (why they stop here is not so
clear), then write nasty words on him while pressing
each other's obvious buttons: Julie accuses Paula of
being privileged and apathetic, Paula accuses Julie of
being a lonely old lady; Paula dares Julie to touch
Nick's dick, to pose for a photo with the body, and
then, to kiss her.
These last moments are clearly unnerving for Julie,
but the film never makes clear why they are, since she
is, after all, a self-aware, tough chick who is
comfortable in a mostly un-self-aware, tough world.
Paula apparently introduces the chance Julie will be
"caught" or that she'll do something she hasn't done
before. But what is the real risk here? Paula suggests
that Julie may be: a) unhappy with her life and b)
interested in girls, but how can either of these be
new ideas, to Julie, or to viewers? In fact, none of
this all-night exchange is so wayward or alarming as
the movie seems to think it is. Though, I must say
that Nick's unconsciousness through it all is a nice
touch: he is an appropriate emblem of what ails the
women, a cocky fellow who is also ragingly irrelevant.
Paula's ostensible insight about women in business --
"We express issues of doubt and control differently"
-- is lost: these women reflect and even emulate the
men they despise and envy. This in itself is hardly a
trite observation (it's actually quite sad), but the
film sets it up like it's a revelation, rather than a
point of departure. The Business of Strangers
doesn't press on to any of the more dangerous
questions it hints at: Paula's performance never
reveals anything you don't presume about her, and
Julie learns precisely what you think she will.
