THE BUSINESS OF STRANGERS

A tough career woman, relieved to learn she's been promoted, not fired, drunkenly celebrates at an airport hotel with a younger, tougher woman. What should have been a wonderfully high time soon turns into a nightmare involving a man who may or may not be a rapist.

(Now in stores)

CAST: Stockard Channing, Julia Stiles, Frederick Weller, Mary Testa, Jack Hallett, Marcus Giamatti, Buddy Fitzpatrick, Salem Ludwig, Shelagh Ratner

DIRECTOR: Patrick Stettner



"In a singularly confident feature debut, Stettner keeps us wondering whether he's setting in motion a highly charged drama or a suspense thriller, and this uncertainty pays off most effectively at the finish....The film is a witty, razor-sharp study of character...'The Business of Strangers' is crisp and provocative, and no small amount of its pleasure derives from Channing's dazzling performance." --Kevin Thomas, The Los Angeles Times

"Although the climactic scenes in the film have a certain weird fascination, I am not sure they're in character...The movie, having started with acute psychological observation, moves beyond realism into melodrama...if the first half of the film hadn't been so good, I might not question the second half so much...Either way, it's a good movie, and Channing and Stiles are the right choices for these roles. They zero in on each other like heat-seeking missiles." --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times


"Stockard Channing is formidably good--a career woman in extremis--but the movie otherwise unfortunately resembles a product of the Neil LaBute Finishing School." -- Peter Rainer, New York

"The film's performances are matched in power by its surreal, hellish vision of corporate life as an impersonal killing field in which the wounds are camouflaged by a suffocating blandness...With an intensity that few movies have mustered, 'The Business of Strangers' makes you feel the acute loneliness of it all, the empty pit-of-your-stomach feeling of being lost on the road in a world of masks with only your own ambition and gnawing paranoia for companionship." --Stephen Holden, The New York Times

"...a maliciously funny and keenly observant movie--director-writer Patrick Stettner makes a potent feature debut--that serves its humor dark and without artificial sweeteners... eyes alive to every nuance of humor and heartbreak, of rage and regret, Channing reigns supreme; she's a wonder to behold." --Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

"The characters are well-drawn at the outset; both Stockard Channing as the single-minded CEO and Julia Stiles as the manipulative assistant give finely nuanced performances, but the payoff doesn't match the buildup." --Stephen Farber, Movieline

"...show-offy dismantling of the first-generation-feminist notion that Sisterhood Is Powerful; sisterhood, it turns out, is skin-deep, with the smooth retaining an edge over the wrinkled. None of this detracts, however, from the terrific piss-and-merlot performances of Channing and Stiles..." --Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly