DIRECTOR Mike Nichols's new film, Closer, is the story of four strangers their chance meetings, instant attractions and casual betrayals.

Patrick Marber's comedy/drama Closer debuted in London in 1997 to rave reviews and won the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for best new play and the London Critics' Circle Award. The subsequent Broadway production was nominated for a Tony Award for best play and won the New York Critics Award for best foreign play. It has since gone on to be produced in more than 100 cities around the world and translated into 30 different languages.

What made Closer inherently cinematic, according to Nichols, was the fact that "it's told in the way that people remember things in a telescoped way." Also, he adds, the element of intimacy in Marber's work lends itself better to the screen than the stage.

"It's hard to present intimacy in front of a live audience, whereas in a movie the viewer is alone in the dark with the characters, which is in some ways more apt for intimacy, sex and love."

At the start of the story, Anna, played by Julia Roberts, is a successful photographer and a recent divorcee. After meeting and flirting with Dan (Jude Law), she marries Larry (Clive Owen), all the while carrying on a secret affair with Dan.

Rather than back away from Anna's more questionable behaviour, Roberts was interested in exploring both her character's strengths and her flaws. "I had a great amount of trouble with letting her be this incredibly flawed woman. I think she does some really awful things that even at my worst moments, I look like an amateur compared to this woman. She's very devious, but I don't think it's really calculated."

Jude Law portrays Dan, an aspiring novelist who earns a living writing obituaries. Though Marber contends there is no protagonist in the story, Dan is the character through whom all the other characters are introduced.

Reflecting on his character, Law says: "Dan is someone who's really living in a sort of cocoon, a frustrated novelist, until he meets Alice, who becomes his muse. Through her, he blossoms. The relationship is really responsible for him coming out of himself, encouraging him to be confident enough to find the woman he really thinks he loves, Anna.

"Unfortunately, that relationship seems to be doomed from the get-go, and though it gives him some of the happiest days of his life, he eventually throws himself away by pouring himself so wholeheartedly into it."

While he sees Marber's play as basically a story about men and women falling in and out of love, it is also a battle between two male characters who become each other's nemeses.

"There's a certain amount of ego going on between them. You could argue that for them it is almost more important that they're screwing over the other guy than getting the girl they're in love with."

Natalie Portman says her character, Alice, represents a new kind of role for her. "Alice is really alone when she comes to London, so she makes up her entire world, completely creates herself. Yet, she also has this childlike side. She's really honest and direct in her feelings, which distinguishes her from the other characters. So though she's lying about her persona, she's the most direct, honest character in the film."

Besides tackling the character of a multi-faceted adult woman, Portman also had to take lessons in pole dancing for the film, in which she goes to work in a posh London strip club.

"It was fun. I have a whole new respect for pole dancers because it takes a lot of skill and is physically very demanding, a combination of dance and acrobatics," she says.

Clive Owen, who co-stars as Larry, the self-assured dermatologist, played Dan in the original London stage production of Closer, and jumped at the chance to reprise the role for the big screen.

"It was like starting all over again because when you play a part you see the whole thing through that character's perspective. Now I had to re-evaluate everything that I thought when I originally did it, switch everything around and see it from Larry's point of view."

One thing that hasn't changed since he first read the play is his admiration for Marber's material. "You don't often get dialogue like this in movies. It's wonderful to be able to get your teeth into some fantastic dialogue. It's so meaty with four fantastic parts. Playing any of them would be great."