Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)

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Writer/director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men) continues his exploration of the dark side of the gender divide in Your Friends & Neighbors. Ben Stiller, Catherine Keener, Aaron Eckhart, and Amy Brenneman play married people in unfulfilling relationships. Stiller and Brenneman’s characters begin an extra-marital affair with each other while Keener starts seeing a woman (Nastassja Kinski) from an art gallery. All the characters make it pretty obvious what they want out of a relationship. Keener, for example, wants a silent sexual partner, while Stiller wants to talk during the act, and Brenneman just wants a guy who can keep it up for her.

The film sees everyone play musical chairs with sexual partners, only to remain seemingly unfulfilled. Jason Patric (The Lost Boys) steals the show as a mutual acquaintance who is unabashedly predatory in his sexual pursuits. Through Patric’s character, LaBute seems to be suggesting that sex is a selfish endeavor in which you should only try and satisfy yourself. When the male characters talk about their ‘best time,’ Eckhart’s says he is own best lover (through masturbation), and Patric’s character confesses that the best sexual sensation he’s ever had was when he committed a same-sex rape in high school. Keener’s character seems similarly hardwired, though Brenneman’s appears to seek self-worth through a man’s appreciation (and firm erection).

Your Friends & Neighbors is the sort of movie that doesn’t gain much from the cinematic medium. It’s more like a stage play, but of all the ‘talking heads’ movies that came out of the ’90s indie film boom, it may be one of the most memorable. In dealing with sex and gender, LaBute has a more defensible hypothesis about men, but seems less sure-handed in any statement about women. He opens himself up to scrutiny and controversy. But I don’t think it’s clear whether we’re supposed to interpret the characters as representatives of their entire genders. LaBute wisely ends the film on a note suggesting everything leading up to that moment may be hogwash anyway. He’s smart to tread lightly and brave for continuing his thematic exploration.