The Business of Strangers

Near the beginning of this imaginative film when Paula Murphy (20-year-old Julia Stiles) and Julie Styron (Stockard Channing) meet in earnest, Paula tells Julie what she really does in life: "I'm a writer," she says. I write short stories about things that I experience. Nonfiction. "Fiction is too stupid, too neat. I like the sloppiness of real life." What we don't know at the time is that Paula is about to improvise just such a tale involving Julie, a tale that challenges the middle-aged executive's lifestyle and her assumptions about herself and inspires her to do things she wouldn't normally do.

This is the "business of strangers." And this is the story within the story. Paula is the diabolical kind of person who is dedicated to introducing people to themselves so that she can watch them twist, a privileged, under-achieving Ivy League girl with machinations. Julie is a community college workaholic who never had time for a family, or love, or self-discovery, a lonely woman whose life is a parade of sterile hotel rooms, anonymous strangers, alcohol and pills. Although the story drags in a little in spots, the overall effect is edgy and fascinating, and the contrast between the principals keeps us wondering who is going to come out on top.

The action really begins when Julie, in an expansive mood with some booze and her promotion to CEO, shows some interest in the girl she just fired for being late to a presentation. It's not clear what sort of interest that is. Julie responds as a spider coaxing a fly into the web, but it's not clear what she's up to. They go to the pool and play around, get on the treadmills at the gym and run. They go back to Julie's suite and drink some more.

At this point I'm afraid that the film will deteriorate into a politically correct cliché of some kind, or a lesbian wish-fulfillment debacle, without anything really happening. Enter (or actually re-enter) Nick Harris (Fred Weller) who, Paula has confided to Julie, raped her best friend when they were undergraduates in Boston. This excites Julie's loathing and so the two women play out an improvised and drunken revenge scenario that is a bit over the top, but psychologically correct.

After some intense emotional interaction, the film resolves surprisingly and rather neatly, allowing us to see that Paula has indeed spun out a tale whose moral might be, "watch out for young foxes." The scene in the airport emphasizes this, with Julie and Nick sheepishly sorting out last night's bizarre debauchery while trying to maintain their dignity, with Paula poised brazenly in plain sight wearing earphones, a smug silhouette in the distance.

Patrick Stettner wrote the script, which, judging from the series of stationary settings and the limited cast, I suspect was originally a stage play. He also directed in a business-like manner, getting a saucy and smirk-laden performance from Stiles, whose originality and talent is obvious, and a steady and believable one from veteran Channing. Incidentally, Channing is a Harvard graduate who is perhaps best known for her performance as Betty Rizzo in Grease (1978) playing a teenager when she was 32-years-old! Here she braves some close camera work that starkly reveals the 57-year-old actress beneath the makeup. Yet, as always, Stockard Channing pleases us.

But see this for Julia Stiles, a thoroughly professional player, whose arrogant, sneering, and edgy style add spice to, and partially disguise, her youthful mastery of the fine art of acting.

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In "The Business of Strangers", Stockard Channing plays Julie Styron, a self-made business woman approaching middle age who is paired up with young tech assistant Paula Murphy (played by Julia Stiles) on a business trip. When Paula arrives late to a meeting due to a delayed flight, a distressed Julie has her fired on the spot. Later, after being promoted CEO of the company, Julie runs into Paula sitting alone in a bar, apologizes for her rash behavior and the two set out on a night of female bonding, power trips, revenge, mind games, and button pushing.

This verbal film spends a considerable time exploring the stark contrasts between the two women. Paula is a hostile young woman who writes non-fiction about her life experiences, sports tattoos, experiments with bisexuality and self-mutilation, and has a fondness for hardcore pornography. Julie is career-driven to the point of isolation and is much softer and less confrontational than Paula. It is exactly through these contrasts that we see a complementary relationship emerge between these two characters. While Paula's brash confidence exposes Julie's insecurity and anxiety, Julie's worldliness and experience make Paula seem impetuous. As a result, a dynamic interplay and synergy come out from these exchanges.

When a male associate of Julie's enters the plot, Paula ups the ante by revealing to Julie that he committed a rape at a frat party she attended in Boston years ago. From this point on, "The Business of Strangers" turns into a story of revenge and maintains a misanthropic and satirical tone. It is this tone that makes "The Business of Strangers" so much like Neil Labute's indie hit, "In the Company of Men", in the way that it explores power trips, mind games, one-upmanship, and competition. In this film, a woman's struggle within a male-dominated corporate world is also an theme that is covered.

"The Business of Strangers" is not exactly an impressive film stylistically, but it more than makes up for this in its delicious dialogue which works two ways. It always keep the suspense going by teasing and daring the audience to guess what will happen next, only to foil any attempt to do so. Another thing the dialogue does is establish the characters' personalities by shedding light on their life histories and motives. Channing and Stiles fill both their roles to perfection and play off each other extremely well. Channing is up to task with her most interesting role since "Six Degrees of Separation" nearly ten years ago. Every look and gesture serves to imply the world-weariness and jaded vulnerability that Julie inhabits. Stiles, is no less impressive as the more provocative of the two women. Apart from seeing a few random scenes from "10 Things I Hate About You", I have never seen her act before, but her dynamic performance here has me intrigued. Both Channing and Stiles are deserving of Oscar nominations, but will most likely be overlooked since "The Business of Strangers" is a low budget indie film. While the 85-minute running time is slight, this movie will keep you engaged in thought as well as entertained.

Poignant tale of two eager women; one has passed her prime and bears the scares of the still male dominated business world of the early new millennium is aggressively portrayed to a 'T' (as in Tenacious) by Stockard Channing who is chillingly ruthless from frame to frame. The other younger, equally crafty, as well as wickedly sly woman is played by Julia Stiles who no doubt is cast by design to steal the glances of the male audience as well as opposite genders in this story of destructive payback.

Stiles' character is manipulatively calculating as she subtly unfolds a selfish plan to map a path to own success yet who's comeuppance could inevitably be in her near future at the hands of her adversary's lofty rank… or possibly visa-versa given that both become disillusioned by the cardinal sins of greed, envy and last but certainly not least, lust. Gets off the track a bit with the man-humiliation angle which may have went a bit to far but both Channing is stellar and Stiles is something to be reckoned with in this picture in more ways than one as both should be duly commended for their outstanding performances. Comparisons to Neil LaBute's powerful 1997 'In the Company of Men' are inevitable but still stands well on its own.

Stockard Channing has always been a terrific actress and her excellent performance comes as no surprise but Julia Stiles is also very good thanks to a thought provoking script. I've always had my suspicions about Stiles and here she shows she also has some good "Stuff". I hope she gets offered more films like this instead of the teenage fare where all that is needed is attitude. As good as Stiles is its still Channing's film. Youth cannot overcome experience, not here anyway.

What a pleasure to watch Stockard Channing in this film! The range of emotions she undergoes playing Julie, an over-the-hill, frustrated and angry woman, who perhaps has been overlooked by her employers, like so many other women with a lot of qualifications, too many times. She is totally vulnerable. She's afraid of losing her job, which she has worked probably so hard to obtain and keep. She goes from one extreme to another in a range that is very hard to imagine another could convey as eloquently as Ms. Channing.

She meets her match when Paula, her new assistant, gets into the picture. Paula is an enigmatic character who we don't know where she's coming from, yet, she exerts an incredible amount of power over her newly acquired boss. That's when the fun and games begin. Julia Stiles projects a mystery about who this assistant is, obviously a product of privilege and wealth in sharp contrast with Stockard Channing character, who we get to know, comes from very humble origin and whose ascent into the position she is now is the product of hard work. Her ambition is natural because her Julie has had to struggle and fight for whatever she has gotten from life, including her present executive position.

It's like a good tennis match watching these two actresses go at it, and at each other throughout the film, but it is Miss Channing who outshines and makes this feature so much fun to watch. The script and direction from Patrick Stettner are just right, but he is well served by his cast.