[7]

Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles decide to exact revenge on an accused rapist in this intimate character showcase written and directed by Patrick Stettner. Channing’s character is a cool, collected business woman who has just been made CEO of her company. Stiles is a shady underling who waxes philosophic on gender studies. The two get to know each other while laid over at a hotel one evening. They bump into a man at the hotel bar who makes Stiles’ character uncomfortable, so they dodge him and go back to Channing’s room. Stiles tells Channing the man raped a friend of hers. When the man (Frederick Weller) comes knocking, the women drug him and contemplate their revenge.

It could have been a simple revenge story, but The Business of Strangers is trickier than that. Stiles’ character is a master manipulator, and you’re never quite certain what she’s really going after. More than anything, it seems like she’s trying to unearth some kind of rage in Channing’s character. She wants Channing to lose that permafrost cool, engaging her in conversations about competing with men on her long climb to the top, and putting before her an unconscious representative of those men. That ice begins to crack in a memorable scene in which Channing gets carried away writing derogatory names over the man’s naked body. She throws the sharpie marker aside while sitting on the man’s back, then reaches down and covers his nose and mouth. Stiles watches this fit of primal rage, amused.

For a movie about to brim over with subtext, The Business of Strangers remains remarkably unpretentious, anchored in two solid characters and the power play between them. It’s a great vehicle for Channing and Stiles, two of the best actors of their generations.