The film Closer is practically drenched in Scorpio’s essence—jealousy, obsession, power struggles, and the relentless pursuit of truth, no matter how devastating. Each character embodies an aspect of the 8th-house terrain, where intimacy and betrayal dance together in beautifully tragic scenes. Jude Law’s character, Dan, flirts with depth but is ultimately a scavenger of emotions, trying to taste intensity without truly surrendering to it. Natalie Portman’s Alice is the enigma—both vulnerable and untouchable, embodying Pluto’s gift of transformation and illusion. Julia Roberts’ Anna is haunted by the weight of desire versus duty, and Clive Owen’s Larry? He’s pure Scorpionic vengeance, wielding sex and honesty like weapons. Pluto doesn’t allow for casual façades. It drags everything hidden—our fears, our wounds, our deepest desires—into the open, where they either destroy or transform us. The film’s confrontations are not only uncomfortable; they’re purifying, like fire scorching away pretense. No one leaves the story unscathed, because that’s Pluto’s way—transform or perish.

This film doesn’t simply tell a story; it peels back the skin of human relationships, exposing the raw nerves underneath. And if we’re going to talk about it through the lens of astrology, then yes, we’re diving deep into Scorpio’s dark waters, where Pluto reigns like an obsessive, all-seeing underworld god. Pluto, as Scorpio’s ruler, is not a planet of casual dalliances. It’s the force that drags what’s hidden into the light, whether we like it or not. In Closer, the characters are caught in an almost mythic struggle—not only with each other but with their own psychological depths. There’s no escape. They crave what’s real, yet it destroys them. They seek love, yet they manipulate, deceive, and wound. This is Pluto in its most primal form: the planet that insists on transformation through pain, the burning away of illusion, the brutal honesty that leaves no room for sentimentality.

The House of Intimacy

And then, of course, we have the 8th house—where intimacy is never simple, where sex and emotional vulnerability are tangled up in power struggles, where every word holds the potential to annihilate. The film’s confrontations—especially between Dan and Alice, and between Anna and Larry—aren’t light conversations. The characters lay each other bare, forcing one another to confront what they’d rather keep hidden.

Scorpio’s influence is relentless. There is no lighthearted romance here, no gentle drifting apart. Love in this world is possession, obsession, interrogation. It’s the Plutonic drive to merge completely with another, only to recoil in horror when true vulnerability is exposed. Each character is both victim and perpetrator, desperate for connection yet terrified of what it demands. It’s not love they fear losing—it’s the power dynamic shifting out of their control. And in the end, what’s left? Pluto doesn’t promise comfort, only transformation. But transformation is rarely pretty. It’s loss, devastation, ego death. It’s Alice walking away, nameless once again, the only one who truly sees the power in letting go. The others are left circling in their own shadows, bound by their own compulsions. Scorpio teaches that destruction is necessary for rebirth—but whether they truly learn from it is another matter entirely.

The Reality of Relationships

Scorpio doesn’t do surface-level. It doesn’t flirt with truth; it drags it out kicking and screaming, even when the revelation leaves scars. In Closer, there’s no room for polite dishonesty or blissful ignorance. The characters, in true Scorpio fashion, crave the unfiltered, unvarnished reality of their relationships, even when it dismantles them. Dan, for instance, embodies the destructive curiosity of Scorpio’s energy—poking, prodding, unable to leave well enough alone. He wants intimacy, but more than that, he wants knowledge. Not the soft, romantic kind, but the brutal, under-the-skin kind. The kind that answers the unspoken question: Do you love me more? It’s a hunger for emotional dominance disguised as a need for honesty.

Larry, on the other hand, is Scorpio’s raw, confrontational power. He doesn’t just seek the truth—he forces it out, twisting the knife as he does. When he interrogates Anna about her affair, he doesn’t merely want to know—he wants to hear every detail, wants her to say it, to feel it, to suffer under the weight of it. This is Pluto’s influence at its most primal: the need to expose, to own, to break something just to see if it will still function afterward.

And then there’s Alice, the mystery, the enigma—the Scorpionic femme fatale who plays the game but never lets it consume her. She, more than anyone, understands the power of hidden depths. She gives just enough of herself to create intimacy but retains enough secrecy to remain untouchable. In the end, it is she who walks away intact, because she, unlike the others, knows when to hold on and when to disappear.

Scorpio’s energy is relentless in its pursuit of the real, and in Closer, that pursuit is both the driving force and the downfall of every character. They want to see what’s beneath the mask, but once it’s stripped away, they find that it doesn’t always set them free—it often destroys them.

All or Nothing

Scorpio doesn’t deal in half-measures. It’s all or nothing. And in Closer, that energy is palpable in every exchange, every accusation, every carefully wielded accusation. Once something is spoken in this world—once a betrayal is confessed, an insult is hurled, a wound is opened—there’s no taking it back. The past doesn’t dissolve; it lingers, festers, transforms into something even darker. This is Scorpio’s domain: the realm of irrevocable change, where words cut like weapons and love can turn into a battlefield.

The characters in Closer don’t simply hurt each other—they strategize their pain. Larry, in particular, is the embodiment of Scorpio’s retaliatory force. He doesn’t react normally; he calculates. When he learns of Anna’s affair, he doesn’t break down—he sharpens his grief into a blade and turns it back on her, making her suffer for every moment of deception. The confrontation is about power. Who will walk away victorious? Who will be left broken? Larry ensures that even as he loses Anna, he still wins in some way. This is Scorpio’s form of justice: If you wound me, I will wound you deeper.

Dan, too, engages in this dance of emotional revenge, though his methods are subtler. He is less a vengeful scorpion and more a desperate, flailing version of Pluto’s transformative force—always searching, always questioning, always digging deeper even when the excavation only leads to more destruction. He believes in emotional reciprocity, but he’s also ruled by compulsion. He asks Alice if she slept with Larry not because he needs to know, but because he can’t stop himself from knowing. And once he knows, he can never un-know. This is the Scorpio curse: the inability to let things go, even when holding on is what destroys you.

Alice, however, is the exception—the one who understands Scorpio’s lesson best. She plays the game, but she never lets it own her. She knows when to withhold, when to wield silence as her most potent weapon. She is the true Scorpio survivor, the one who transforms without losing herself. While the others spiral in their own emotional warfare, she walks away—not unscathed, but free. And in Scorpio’s world, freedom is the ultimate power.

America’s Sweetheart

Julia Roberts is America’s sweetheart, but with a Scorpio Sun and a Venus-Pluto conjunction? It’s not pure sweetness; it’s honey laced with poison, love entwined with power, beauty shadowed by obsession. It’s no wonder she often plays characters caught in emotional crossfires, where love is survival. In Closer, her character, Anna, is a textbook Venus-Pluto figure—drawn to love, but never able to hold onto it without consequence. Venus conjunct Pluto doesn’t do lighthearted flings; it binds, it consumes, it transforms.

Anna is desired, yet she never seems fully in control of that desire. She loves, but love costs her. She’s the one who leaves Dan, the one who ultimately chooses Larry, yet in doing so, she loses something of herself. She isn’t the femme fatale, nor is she the innocent—she’s somewhere in between, caught in the undertow of Pluto’s relentless lessons.

This Venus-Pluto conjunction in Julia Roberts’ chart likely enhances her ability to tap into these roles with an uncanny depth. It’s the reason why her on-screen romances never feel weightless—there’s always an intensity, a magnetic pull, an unspoken danger lurking beneath the surface. Think of her in Pretty Woman, where love is tied to power and transformation. Or in Erin Brockovich, where her charm is her weapon, and her emotional tenacity reshapes the world around her. Even in Eat Pray Love, a film about self-discovery, love is not a simple joy—it is something she must dismantle and rebuild within herself.

Sleeping with the Enemy—the ultimate cinematic portrayal of love turned suffocating, devotion turned domination. And if we’re viewing it through the astrological lens of Julia Roberts’ Scorpio Sun and Venus-Pluto conjunction, then this film is practically a case study in Scorpio’s darker realms: power struggles, survival, transformation, and the ever-present shadow of control disguised as love. Julia’s character, Laura, embodies the Pluto archetype—the one who must undergo death and rebirth. She starts as the trapped, disempowered version of Venus under Pluto’s thumb—married to a man who adores her, but also owns her, watches her, dictates the rhythm of her life down to the placement of towels. This is love at its most suffocating, its most obsessive—a textbook Venus-Pluto relationship where passion becomes possession, and devotion becomes domination. But here’s the thing about Scorpio energy—it doesn’t stay a victim. It transforms. It waits. When the moment is right, it escapes. Laura’s faked death and reinvention of herself is pure Pluto—she not only leaves her husband, she destroys the version of herself that was bound to him. She is reborn, quite literally, into a new name, a new town, a new identity. But as any Plutonic tale teaches us, the past doesn’t simply vanish. It haunts, it hunts, it resurfaces like a ghost demanding closure. Her husband, Martin, is the embodiment of Scorpio’s unyielding grip—unable to let go, unable to accept that love is not ownership. He is the shadow side of Pluto: obsession without transformation, control without growth. He seeks her out not to win her back, but to ensure she remains his, because in his world, love is about domination, not mutual connection. This is the Scorpio sting at its most venomous—if I can’t have you, no one can. And yet, Laura’s arc is one of true Scorpio power. She doesn’t just hide anymore; she ends it. By the time she turns the gun on Martin, she has fully stepped into her power—no longer the fragile, fearful woman he manipulated, but someone who has faced the abyss and emerged stronger. This is Pluto’s final lesson: transformation is painful, but on the other side of destruction is something unbreakable. So in the grand scheme of Julia Roberts’ filmography, Sleeping with the Enemy is perhaps one of the most astrologically fitting roles she’s ever played. A Scorpio Sun with Venus-Pluto knows that love is about  power, it is survival, and sometimes, it requires walking through fire to reclaim yourself.

In Closer, this energy manifests as Anna’s quiet, smoldering presence—she isn’t as outwardly ruthless as Larry, nor as self-destructive as Dan, nor as enigmatic as Alice. But she holds something equally dangerous: the ability to withdraw. To disappear from someone’s life emotionally before she does so physically. That’s the shadow side of Venus-Pluto—the realization that sometimes, the deepest power move is simply walking away.

You don’t just love in Scorpio land—you merge, you consume, you obliterate. It’s passion with consequences, desire with a price tag. And Pluto doesn’t do half-truths. It yanks the curtain back, exposing everything—the jealousy, the obsession, the deep, primal fears we pretend we don’t have. It forces us to look at love not as some soft-focus fairytale but as a battlefield where only the emotionally strong survive. There’s no casual retreat in Scorpio’s world. Once you enter the emotional depths, you either learn to swim or drown. It’s truth at all costs, but truth is messy. It’s ugly. It’s the kind of honesty that leaves scars. And in the heat of the moment—when the sting comes out, when words are weapons—there’s no erasing the damage. It lingers, festers, transforms. This is the Scorpio paradox: the need for intimacy so deep it borders on destruction. So how close is too close? That’s the million-dollar question. Scorpio wants to fuse, to dissolve the boundaries between self and other—but go too far, and you lose yourself completely. There’s a fine line between deep intimacy and emotional self-destruction, and that’s the danger zone. Love under Scorpio’s influence is either the most transformative experience of your life or the kiss of death. And the difference between the two? Knowing when to pull back before the fire consumes you whole.