But the film keeps its distance from its characters, sometimes their motivation (beyond raw sexual passion) is unclear, and some of their behaviour seems forced to fit the dictates of plot.
The central idea appears to be that ambitious Richard falls in love with his sister, but she is only game-playing he then falls apart. To start with, the subsequent plotting doesn't quite work. But for all Poliakoff's brilliantly striking imagery, the film manifests some serious defects. The skill with which the film effectively tells half its story in just a handful of minutes, with brilliantly selected visuals replacing the need for expository dialogue, is breathtaking one can hardly take one's eyes off the screen. And Natalie, who has gained a new confidence, starts to come on to Richard with a very definite intent. Sinclair is a millionaire futurologist, a man both kindly, but also child-like in his fundamental inability to empathise. And then Natalie, whom he has almost forgotten, gets in touch and invites him to meet her new husband, Sinclair (played wonderfully by Alan Rickman, in probably his finest role). But after years abroad, Richard comes home, rather surprisingly to take a lowly paid public sector job.
The unfolding of their lives over the next few years is then summarised through a depiction of their subsequent (non-) interactions: he is every bit the strident, ambitious, fornicating yuppie while she feels lost and uncertain, with a brother-shaped hole in her life.
She, on the other hand, is upset, and looks to him for comfort and in the middle of the night, they share a moment of affection that goes a little bit beyond what siblings ought to do. As the credits fade, the camera homes in on a young man in a hurry (Richard, played by Clive Owen), passing by the bowlers it turns out that the woman is his estranged sister, and he's late. We see a floodlit bowling green, incongruously (but, given that one of the subplots of the movie turns out to concern urban planning law, not irrelevantly) positioned amongst tower blocks meanwhile a young woman (Natalie, played by Saskia Reeves) is smoking a cigarette on a balcony, possibly in one of those same blocks. The opening scenes of Stephen Poliakoff's film, 'Close My Eyes', are truly mesmerising.