The Business of Strangers (2001)

The Business of Strangers is about the world of those women jockeying their lives in the phallocentric spheres of our society. It's a great movie done with very little.The good. Simple yet very elegant mood and settings. Solid editing. Interesting, realistic, and straight forward story. Nicely put together characters who evolve before our eyes.The actors. In this production, we can see Julia Stiles starting to spread her wings and some of her potential. However, as much as I love her, Stockard Channing is the real star here. She portrays the power business woman, her struggle and her changes of mood, with incredible clarity.The bad. The emptiness of ordinary lives usually filled with glitz and details by Hollywood can be slightly disorienting here. I think it's perfect, but not for everyone.The ugly. Nothing.The result. Very low key character driven film. Don't expect a dazzling display, turn on your brain, and you won't be disappointed.

"The Business of Strangers" answers the, "What if a cruel psychopath was plopped into a group of normal persons", question. In this movie, the psychopath is Julia Stiles, and the normal group consists of only two individuals, Stockard Channing and Fred Weller. From the outset I found every bit of the movie credible. Stockard Channing is an anxious, stressed, and cynical professional who knows utter randomness is a fact of life. She does her job as well as she can, but realizes that most of her working future is way beyond her control. Fred Weller is an unnecessary acquaintance who happens to be there when the Julia Stiles character lands in their midst.Now, I must confess that being a male reviewing a work involving predominantly females may not seem proper because I am sure I missed many nuances, both verbal and nonverbal, that women would note and understand, however, that said, from my point of view, I could understand the power struggles and spur of the moment decisions that Channing was forced to confront. Maybe it is only in my imagination that women have the same conflicts and tensions as men, but the way this story was presented I am sure gender was not a determining factor motivating the actions of either the Channing or Stiles character. Those motivations being a struggle for conquest, self-preservation, and sanity.To be quite frank, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I thought the acting, tone, and plot were all far above average and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good hour and a half of sophisticated and intense escapism.

Watched this movie waiting for the supposed link between the two female characters as stated on the dvd case. What link? Wacko meets successfully burned out CEO? Can't believe this was even made into a movie. Who would pay for this kind of script. Take the elevator lesbo scene and the lost my shorts in the pool scene and put it into another movie. Other than that, the entire movie was just kind of sucky. There were so many opportunities to make this into a movie that could have been made into some kind of story with some appeal. The character played by Julia Stiles could have been in cahoots with someone to overthrow Sockards new CEO position. Or she could have just starting killing off everyone one by one. I'm so glad they could write on each other with magic markers and this CEO just realized how unhappy she is. Now give me some hormone replacement therapy and let's watch a movie that I could recommend for someone to watch.

If this is supposed to be a turn on the usual men-exploiting-women movie, then congrats to all concerned, its great to know that the playing field is now equal.It started off great, it really did. The cinematography is remarkable and I am assuming there was not a gigantic budget, but you'd never know it by what is onscreen - the 'look' of the movie is also terrific. It has a certain feel to it - I give it that much credit gladly.But then you get to the characters and the screenplay and the actual words that are said and it all goes into the garbage can very fast. I didn't buy either womans' motivation for anything. Is the woman Julia Stiles plays a psychopath, a liar, a spoiled brat or just bored? Is the woman Stockard Channing plays an idiot, a moron or just bored? For Stiles to accuse Frederick Weller of rape/sexual abuse just for the fun of it is an insult to women and men worldwide who have actually suffered such abuse. I like Weller and watched this originally to see him. I watched it again to make sure I hated it as much as I did the first time, and I did. 3/10 and that's generous on my part.