SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE
As its lowercase title suggests, sex, lies, and videotape is an example of lowercase filmmaking: lean, economical, relatively unpretentious (or at least pretentiously unpretentious), and purposefully small-scale. Its having walked off with the Cannes film festival’s Palme d’Or–making first-time writer-director Steven Soderbergh at 26 the youngest filmmaker ever to win that prize–saddles it with more of a reputation than it can comfortably live up to. In a time of relative drought, it’s certainly a small oasis, but the attention it’s been getting befits something closer to a breakthrough geyser.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It seems more a matter of chance than design, but sex, lies, and videotape makes its appearance when the national climate is shot through with maniacal puritanism. (This climate is beautifully parodied by Philip Roth’s impersonation of George Bush in the August 12 issue of the New York Review of Books. Roth’s Bush submits a constitutional amendment to Congress reading, “Neither menstruation nor masturbation shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” because “Menstruation is murder and masturbation, of course, is worse.”) Soderbergh, however, is not trying to comment on such a climate. Although he is concerned with therapy and healing, the movie itself is far too involved in the localized causes and effects of repression to have anything to say about it other than how it impinges on the lives of his four characters. This is plenty for any small-scale movie to tackle, and I don’t fault the film for shirking the subject’s wider and more social implications. But I am suggesting that the social climate the film doesn’t deal with is having an effect on how it’s being received, by audiences as well as critics.
Not long after John arrives at Cynthia’s house, Graham arrives at John and Ann’s house and meets Ann for the first time. The two profane characters and the two sanctified characters have now been paired off, and thanks to the economy of Soderbergh’s script, by the time we’ve arrived at this juncture we already know something about all four characters.
There’s no doubt that the film shows a lot of promise. The dialogue is sharp and functional, the lead actors are all good, and the direction is unusually astute about concentrating our attention on the actors and what they say and not distracting us.
Stepping outside the film’s framework for a moment, one might also question whether the film’s implicit puritanism–which has so much to do with the narrative tension and eventual moral reckonings, not to mention the film’s overall and widespread appeal–doesn’t finally represent a separate limitation of its own. A morality play about sexual haves and have-nots, it offers a lot of satisfaction to everyone who feels sexually deprived and/or maladjusted, which in this day and age undoubtedly includes most of the audience. But the movie’s reticence about the ultimate sexual and therapeutic victory of the have-nots–a graceful and tactful ellipsis that makes it all seem pretty transcendental and theoretical rather than material or sensual–leaves me wanting something more.
