sex, lies and videotape (1989)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
I am currently cataloguing a documentation of the first three months I spent on an exchange trip to Poland in early 2005. During this time I had the opportunity to visit Amsterdam where I indulged in the several hash cakes, it was during one of these surrealist confectionary journeys that I saw Ocean’s Twelve, a film from director Steven Soderbergh. Considering my twisted state at the time of watching, the film seemed to be absolutely absurd, I was utterly thrown by why George Clooney wanted to bring his gang to Amsterdam, the very place I was watching the film. When I heard that the same director had created a film several years back about the life of a curious drifter who records intimate interviews with women, I knew that I had to see it. Two and a half years later I managed to get hold of a copy, sit myself down and observe. I use the word ‘observe’ due to the odd feeling that the film triggered inside me while watching. The slow and acute camera angles convey an almost documentary feel to the trashy eighties landscape, short witty dialogue and brittle design of Laura San Giacamo’s raunchy character Cynthia. The film follows the misfortune of James Spader's character Graham, who’s recent long term relationship has left him impotent and honest. Due to sexual frustration and perhaps guilt, Graham turns to filming and interviewing women he meets to vent his sexual disturbance. Graham ends up staying with John, played by Peter Gallagher, an old friend of his, but ends up spending more time with John's wife, Ann. The character of Ann is beautifully portrayed by Andie Macdowell, most famous for her role in Groundhog Day. As the plot unfolds, it follows the tumultuous affair between John and his wife’s sister Cynthia. The script and the social statements that are made in the film are so well rehearsed and synchronised that the role of audience seems to transform into voyeur, at least that is how I felt. Graham’s ideas and principles behind filming the women and his future intentions toward the tapes seem to be both sexual and psychological, as if trying to piece together the sexual drives and experiences of the women he speaks to. I found this a little frustrating as aesthetics of each interview relate well to my ‘070105’ project in that each character is real and divulges a personal history to the camera, thusly thrusting their intimacies into the laps of the audience, and perhaps that was what the director was trying to do himself. Soderbergh has indeed created a thought provoking and dramatic film, full to the brim with arousing commentaries on marriage, habit and sexual dysfunction. Why it took me so long to get a copy of this film and watch it I do not know. I am however genuinely enticed by Soderbergh’s film and vow never again to leave it so long after hearing such positive remarks about diverse stories so similar to working projects of my own.
