Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)

 Sex, Lies, and Videotape(1989) 
                           

Director Steven Soderbergh's voyeuristic indie drama paints an intense, intimate portrait of discord among a frigid housewife (Andie MacDowell), her philandering husband (Peter Gallagher), her adulterous sibling (Laura San Giacomo) and an intriguing out-of-towner (James Spader). When Spader arrives with a trunk load of videotapes featuring women confessing  their sexual secrets on camera, he gradually turns the quartet's lives inside out.

       Genre(s)        Drama 
       Written         Steven Soderbergh 
       Directed        Steven Soderbergh 

        Music            Cliff Martinez 
        Cinematography Walt Lloyd
        Editing         Steven Soderbergh
        Distributed     Miramax Films 

Release Date   Theatrical: August 4, 1989 
                 DVD: September 8, 1998 
Running Time   100 minutes, Color 
Origin          USA 
RATING          R 
Starring        James Spader

                 Andie MacDowell

                 Peter Gallagher

                 Laura San Giacomo 
Budget          $1.2 million 
Gross revenue  $24,741,700

Ann (Andie MacDowell) lives in Baton Rouge. She is unhappily married to John (Peter Gallagher) and sexually repressed.

She is seeing a counselor for her problems. Graham Dalton (James Spader) is an old college friend of John's. He's a seeming drifter who, after nine years, returns to live in Baton Rouge. Graham arrives to find Ann, who has no idea that John has invited Graham to stay with them until he finds an apartment. When John arrives home, Graham's demeanor becomes remarkably more guarded, due in large part to John's overt disapproval of Graham's bohemian persona. They also discuss the fact that Graham's college girlfriend, Elizabeth, is also living in Baton Rouge.

John is committing adultery with Ann's sister, Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), a free-spirited bartender. He rationalizes it by blaming Ann's frigidity. He frequently leaves his law office mid-day to meet with Cynthia, instructing his secretary to reschedule clients who are already in the lobby waiting to see him.

Ann makes an impromptu visit to Graham's apartment, where she notices stacks of camcorder tapes around the television. When pressed, Graham explains that he interviews women about their sexual experiences and fantasies, on

videotape. Ann, overcome with shock and confusion, flees his apartment.
Within a day, Cynthia appears at Graham's apartment and introduces herself. Cynthia presses Graham to explain what "spooked" Ann the preceding day. Graham explains the videotapes, and admits to Cynthia his sexual dysfunction: that he is impotent when in the presence of another person, and that he achieves gratification by watching these videos in private. Graham propositions Cynthia to make a tape, assuring her that no other person is allowed to see the tapes. She believes him, and agrees. Cynthia reports back to Ann, who is horrified. Cynthia also tells John.

When Ann discovers Cynthia's pearl earring in her bedroom, she is furious. She heads over to Graham's apartment with the intent of making a videotape. Graham objects, telling her it is something she would not do in a normal frame of mind. She insists and Graham relents.

Afterward, Ann demands a divorce from John. In the ensuing argument, John gleans that Ann has been to Graham's, and that she made a video. He hits Graham and locks him out of the house, then watches Ann's tape. In it, Ann paints a very unflattering portrait of John as a lover, admitting to fantasizing about other men, most notably, Graham. Ann later turns the camera on Graham. Graham confesses that he is haunted by Elizabeth, and that his motivation in returning to Baton Rouge is a vague notion of reconnecting with her. He explains that he was a pathological liar, which destroyed an otherwise rewarding relationship with Elizabeth. He explains that he has since gone to great lengths to keep people at a distance and avoid relationships. Graham turns off the camera; it is implied that the two have sex.
A chastened John joins Graham on the front patio and, with obvious pleasure, confesses to having sex with Elizabeth while she and Graham were a couple. Furious, Graham goes into a rage and destroys all of the tapes, as well as his camera.

In the end, John is summoned to his boss's office, where it’s implied that he is about to be fired due to his frequent cancellations of meetings with important clients to have sexual trysts with Cynthia. In the next scene, Ann and Cynthia reconcile at the bar Cynthia tends, before Ann returns home and joins Graham on the front porch, as they appear to be a couple.

Rolling Stone  Peter Travers:
A movie of prodigious power and feeling that is also high-spirited, hilarious and scorchingly erotic.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle:
The kind of picture to whip out the clichés for: Surprisingly original. Delightful. Brilliant. Funny as all heck. When 1989 is through, sex, lies, and videotape may well be remembered as the best film of the year. [11 Aug 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Los Angeles Times Sheila Benson:
Electrifying… As writer, director and editor, [Soderbergh’s] control is mesmerizing. It's also more than a little creepy; as though Soderbergh were drawing us, a step at a time, into a warm pool where intimate secrets flowed back and forth as simply as currents of water. [4 Aug 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann:
Soderbergh is helped enormously by the interplay of his actors, whom he has cast like a master... [He makes] a film that goes past what it shows to disclose what can't be seen. It's a fine achievement. [4 Sept 1989, p.26]

Time Richard Corliss:
What amazes is that at just 26, Soderbergh displays the three qualities associated with mature filmmakers: a unique authorial voice, a spooky camera assurance, and the easy control of ensemble acting. [31 July 1989, p.65]

Washington Post Rita Kempley:
What "The Big Chill" was to baby boomers, the inspirational sex, lies, and videotape is to the mall crowd. It's designer soul-searching, a looking glass for a generation.
(See More http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/sexliesandvideotape)

 

Robert R:Sex, Lies, and Videotape is an imposingly inherent annotation on infidelity. Its four separate protagonists share affinities in their exposure to sex, one being their reluctance to completely discuss sex as a sober topic. Though it appears that Graham is the most sophomoric of the characters, his ability to comprehend sex as a momentous and frustrating force in life is a profound revelation that permits the transcendence of his character, which deepens the dimensions of—and his relationship to—the Ann protagonist and the two supplementary characters. Through divulging conversations, tentative actions, and foreshadowing cinematography, Steven Soderbergh creates an easily resonant environment that necessitates the viewer’s confrontation with his phobias, analogous to that of Soderbergh’s fiction.

Pat C:An engrossing & unique project that seems indie in its atmosphere and construction. Like the relationships it decribes, it goes nowhere and with reckless unresistable energy. It's like Woody Allen minus the obsession for closure. It was made back when finding an answer still mattered, but when it was also an accepted alternative to minimize the importance of an answer. The sexual mindset as an expression of will is therefore implicit.

Galina(Virginia, USA):Steven Soderbergh's now legendary debut was the first his film I saw. It was in 1989, during the Moscow International Film Festival. Only later I found out that Sodebergh was 29 when he wrote the screenplay in eight days during a trip to Los Angeles and made the film for $1.8 million. His independent movie was a real hit that was selected for Cannes Film Festival and won the Palme d'Or and the best actor prize for James Spader.
The film concerns four attractive and intelligent young people. Ann (Andy MacDowell in the best role I've ever seen her) is married to John (Gallagher) but their sexual life is practically non-existent since Ann finds sex over-rated, and to simply put it, she does not enjoy or even need it. John is having an affair with Ann's sexy younger sister, Cynthia (San Giacomo) who seems to resent Ann. Enters Graham (Spader), John's college friend with the unusual hobby of videotaping women while they describe their sexual fantasies and very important skill - he knows how to listen.
I had seen many movies before "sex, lies and videotape" and I've seen plenty since but it has a special place in my memory. It was the first film I had seen that dealt with and talked about very intimate topics of sexuality, satisfaction, jealousy, sisters' relationship, marital problems and loyalty, the secret longings in all of us, and the ever mysterious nature of erotic desire with such level of honesty, openness, and intelligence. The writing, the dialogs, and the acting are superb with James Spader and Laura San Giacomo simply outstanding and Andie McDowell very convincing.

At the 1989 Cannes Film Festival the film won the Palme d'Or and the FIPRESCI Prize, with Spader getting the Best Actor Award.It also won an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.Soderbergh was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay. In 2006, Sex, Lies,a nd Videotape was selected and preserved by the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

http://www.cinematical.com/2010/01/06/shelf-life-sex-lies-and-videotape/

http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/sexliesandvideotape

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex,_Lies,_and_Videotape#Awards

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098724/