Review of Sex, Lies And Videotape

Introduction

A conspicuous victor at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, as well as a stylistic progenitor to countless sexual-shenanigans-in-the-suburbs movies, Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape’ features a quartet of dysfunctional characters who each select very different ways to distract themselves from their internal malaise. There’s Ann (Andie MacDowell), a mild-mannered but spirited house-wife who seeks solace in the invasive questioning of her therapist; her emotionally retarded, frat-boy husband John (Peter Gallagher) who finds a particularly satisfying form of denial in f***ing Ann’s spunky sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo). Cynthia, in turn, is after weird new guy Graham (James Spader), John’s ex-best-friend and new object of Ann’s affection. What a tangled web they weave.

Video

Stodgy, low-budge photography aside, the transfer is okay. There were a few dirt traces and compression signs here and there, but it wasn’t exactly a dazzling visual enterprise to begin with.

Audio

For a dialogue driven movie the soundtrack is functional, appearing in no less than five languages.

Features

Another MGM back-catalogue disc, so you get zip.

Conclusion

Ignoring for a moment all of that ‘beginning of the revolution’ hysteria often shoe-horned in by eager retrospective critics, ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape’ proves to have considerably more modest ambitions, being another minor work in a director’s career that before his Hollywood renaissance consisted almost entirely of footnote movies. From the out-set it’s clear he was still in his arty period: Soderbergh’s fragmented visual landscape consciously mimics the nouvelle vague (all hermetically sealed rooms with minimal design); as does the overlapping sound design, stylistically applied to lend layers of privacy to the competing dialogues of telephone conversations, videotaped interviews and therapy interrogations.

Where the film really comes alive is in Soderbergh’s skillful development of the characters and their complex interweaving relationships: whether its Ann sleepwalking through a frosty relationship with the hostile Cynthia; or Graham’s disturbing catalogue of home movies recording dozens of women’s most private sexual experiances. Graham’s recordings are his experience of relationships by proxy, a method which proves to further entrench his impotence rather than allay it. But Soderbergh also suggests through the unfulfilling relationships of the other characters, that Graham’s subversion is merely an honest declaration of the true state of their relationships which they refuse to confront.

A continuously interesting and compelling film, sensitively made with some excellent performances; Spader successfully negotiates the fine line between being creepy and sympathetic, and MacDowell delivers an outstanding performance as the only character with a genuine desire for evolution. Soderbergh may be Hollywood’s golden boy, but the low-key intrigue of ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape’ proves that the unassuming footnote movie can be more satisfying than a star-packed spectacle.