Sexe, mensonges & vidéo

"The last time I was happy, I got so fat."

If you chuckle during Andie MacDowell's famous line in Sex, Lies and Videotape, you'll probably think of her sister, Laura San Giacomo as the lead. If you laugh yourself silly, knowing Andie's confession is also true for you, you'll probably think of her as the lead. My weight has always been a direct correlation of my happiness, so that line been added to my household phrases!

If you've never seen it, you'll have to put on your 1989 goggles before renting Steven Soderbergh's breakthrough indie movie. By today's standards, this movie is tame. In 1989, it was shocking and actually considered quite nasty. It was a time before the internet, before photos and videos were constantly taken and spread around, and a time when movies didn't always show nudity and graphic sex scenes. By today's standards, it's not really an oddity if a young man prefers to film and watch sexual encounters rather than to participate in them, but in 1989, James Spader's character was very unusual. Just like most photographers or videographers, he uses the lens to distance himself from situations. He asks people questions about their sexual experiences, and when the women answer him honesty, it's supposed to be very daring. It was daring in 1989!

The other part of the plot is a love triangle involving the dreamy Peter Gallagher. He's married to Andie, but having an affair with her sister, Laura. I've played Laura's part in two separate college reproductions, so I've studied the script probably far more than the average viewer. There's quite a bit to analyze in Soderbergh's script, which film students have been discussing for thirty years. It's a bit of a love-it-or-hate-it movie, so if you watch it and shrug, don't feel like you're missing something. There are plenty of people who think it's overrated and weird, just as there are plenty of people who think it's a staple in indie movies.

Spader's character was the reason I enjoyed the film so much. I could identify with him and his dilemma. It seemed he felt like a stranger in an even stranger land. Who were these humans that seem so happy in the same world he could not find happiness within? What is this life we live? More importantly, what is the point? Why bother? His great battle with existence was a philosophical one. He, like myself, felt infinite sadness over the knowledge that are no concrete answers...

The movie is also interesting because it attacks the main sexual organ, the mind. Graham while trying to distance himself from the human experience by capturing sex confessionals on videotape, perhaps unwittingly became more intimate with his "partners." Roger Ebert points out that the films' argument is that conversation is better than sex.

Personally, I think the movie is about trying to find happiness with another person. Some Modest Mouse song lyrics come to mind. "And it's hard to be a human being/ And it's harder as anything else/ and I'm lonesome when you're around/ I'm never lonesome when I'm by myself" Graham finds it hard to be a human being and live in this human world full of values that he finds strange, confusing, and most importantly unfulfilling. What do you do when your ideology and needs don't mesh in the society you live within? How does one deal with feelings of loneliness in a society that spurns him? This movie is about one man's way.

James Spader does such an excellent job as this character. In fact, great acting all around by the entire cast and excellent writing and directing by Mr. Soderbergh. Go see this movie now!

Sex, Lies and Videotape will probably strike the average viewer as irredeemably degenerate, maybe even perverted, since voyeurism is still considered aberrant behavior. But as far as this film is concerned, that's the appearance, not the reality. Whereas the drama revolves to a certain extent around the voyeuristic masturbation of an impotent man, the heart and soul of the film is an unrelenting, hard driving psychological siege on the biggest erogenous zone of all: the brain.

This film is about sex. But it's not about the frothy swapping of fluids and feelings. It's about honesty, without which one can't have intimacy, which is to sexual stimulation what the water valve is to the hydrant. From beginning to end, we see this theme brought into focus by the dramatic contrast between two different relationships – the one based on lies and deceit, the other based upon honesty. And guess which one wins out in the long run?

In a sense, it's what your mother and Sunday school teacher taught you all along. But what makes this movie way more interesting than your mother or Sunday school teacher is the level of honesty it suggests is necessary as the basis of a healthy relationship. Ann (Andy McDowell), for example, an acceptably moral person tells the voyeuristic masturbator `You got a problem.' He replies by adding that he has a lot of problems. But, he says, `They belong to me.'

Somehow, the openness about one's problems renders their bile and poison ineffective. `Lilies that fester,' said Shakespeare, `smell far worse than weeds.'

Yes, "Sex, Lies and Videotape" is about sex, lies and videotape. And, while the sex is mostly served in dialogue-form and not a single shot of nudity is present, there is some graphic lying and some explicit videotape. Kinky, right?

Well, not really. "Sex, Lies and Videotape" is Steven Sodenbergh's first film and it's not a bad one. It's just not entirely worthy of the praise it received, at Cannes for example. The situations in the film do create a fair amount of tension that moves the story along. But then, it'd be hard not to have some tension in a film about a woman whose husband is cheating on her with her sister, while she starts interacting with a stranger who is the husband's old college roommate and has a strange videotape fetish and may or may not be a pathological liar. (How do you believe someone who just confessed to having been a pathological liar to not being one anymore? The film doesn't really riddle that one for us.)

Clearly, these characters clash together. But it's not as heated or interesting as it was in later Sodenbergh's films like the spectacular "Traffic." The dialogues in "Sex, Lies and Videotape" range from good to incredibly awkward. But the real strength of the film is the actors. While James Spader clearly stands out - I have never seen him deliver such a subtle performance where every scene simply works for him - Andie McDowell is phenomenal, Peter Gallagher playing the scummy, treacherous husband yuppie lawyer type is great and Laura San Giacomo as the vulgar sister / lover is fabulous. Their performances make the script work, which, under normal circumstances with inferior actors would have seemed rather silly.

Steven Soderbergh's debut film is voyeuristic, intense, gripping, and intriguing. It's the story of four people. Ann is a sexually repressed woman with an obsession for cleanliness and organization. Her husband, John, is a lawyer and he is cheating on his wife with her own sister, Cynthia. Ann lives oblivious to what is going on behind her back, despite her deteriorating sex life with John. But things really start to change Graham, an old friend of John's comes in town to visit. Graham is a strange man with an odd set of ideals who also has a fetish of filming women talk about their sexual fantasies. When these personalities conflict and intertwine things start to change dramatically and the tension rises all the way through Soderbergh's ingenious script and his quiet yet intensely focused direction of some fantastic performances.

sex, lies, and videotape is a very risky film which graphically examines sex with the utmost seriousness. In this film sex isn't made into a joke like American Pie, and it isn't turned into some sadistic and grotesque motif like Se7en or Silence of the Lambs. Sex is looked at under a very dramatic and very sincere scope which treats it like any mature and significant piece of subject matter. This is what sets sex, lies, and videotape apart from so many other films of its nature. It is serious, but doesn't give the feeling that it takes itself too seriously. It has to be serious and it just wouldn't feel right for this film to not be as sincere as it is.

The conversations Soderbergh has constructed here are something that need to be serious and need to be focused in order to get the artistic point across. And it is amazing how well the script is constructed. The dialouge feels incredibly real and it knows just when to pull out all of the dramatic stops. The script doesn't feel like it needs to be profoundly eloquent at all times. It is lighthearted and casual at the appropriate times, like when Graham first arrives and he, Ann, and John all sit around the dinner table casually discussing the past, the future, and life in general. But where the real genius comes in is when we realize that despite the present conversation being casual on the surface there is that constant underlying tension which escalates throughout the entire film until it all comes into fruition at the end of the film. The script has all these intelligible nuances that are absent in most "serious" films these days; something you don't really realize is missing until you see how well it can be done in a film like sex, lies, and videotape.

Now obviously this is a very character driven story and I will admit that it is hard to build an emotional connection with any of the characters. To call them imperfect would be a grotesque understatement. The four of them are incredibly flawed people who in retrospect, aren't really good people at all. They all have serious issues that affect their lives dramatically and create situations that are inescapably awful for everyone involved. But what the film lacks in emotion it makes up for in sheer intelligence. The film is so ingeniously crafted that a strong emotional connection to the characters would only cause a distraction to the film's clever craftsmanship.

It's a common misconception that you need to feel strong sympathy for your protagonists in order for a film to be good. sex, lies, and videotape doesn't intend for you to connect with these people. We are only supposed to be fascinated and awestruck at their twisted and bizarre lives. And so to me, this film does its job and it does it well. However, you do feel a strong connection to the film itself and you do want to know what will happen to these people because of the enthralling way this story is told. The absolute beautiful intensity of the script with draw you in so strongly that you won't want to miss a second of it. There comes a point where you begin to feel you must know what happens to these people because you must know how Mr. Soderbergh intends on wrapping this intriguing drama up.

sex, lies, and videotape is well written, well directed, and well acted so its already set up to be a great film. But then you add the pure ingenuity of the way the story is told and what a profound examination of human relationships it is and it is now a fantastic film. This isn't one of those films where you pick out particular scenes that you really liked or specific moments that really wowed you. The entire film cumulatively works together as one single wow moment that you just adore. This isn't a film that you will be strongly moved by and it won't bring you to tears, but it isn't trying to. It is a clever and sincere drama that treats mature adult subject matter the way it should be treated. Not as a joke, but as a basis for ingenuity.