Cheating is nothing new for infidelity expert Nichols

Adultery in Hollywood

By Stephen Hunter
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Hurts so bad.

You know: When your Other decides to play around, with a younger body, or a more appropriate wit, or a professional pleasure franchisee or any of the other categories of mischief. And whether they confess or you find out on your own, it’s the same at the end — the world turns all to broken glass and spider webs. Maybe you two kids come back from it, maybe you don’t. But one thing is absolutely certain: Things will never be the same.

An expert on this explosive situation is the American director Mike Nichols. The Oscar winner checked into theaters recently with “Closer,” an examination on the real crying game, full-contact adultery, leaving plenty of bruises, aches, broken egos and raw feelings. “Closer” is, by my count, the eighth of his 17 features whose plot turns on, or at least details, adultery. He started out with Elizabeth Taylor using it to humiliate Richard Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” In “The Graduate,” for which he won his best director Oscar, Mrs. Robinson had tired of poor old Mr. Robinson, and Dustin Hoffman’s Ben Braddock was the beneficiary. “Carnal Knowledge,” in many ways the direct antecedent of “Closer,” watched four adults shift partners and allegiances over the years, just as in Nichols’ latest film. “Heartburn” and “Regarding Henry” examined adultery (briefly) as a signifier of character weakness in the behavior of two philanderers played by Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford.

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