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 a**holes. 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 forty-five 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 that 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
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.