Sex Lies and Videotape (1989)

It's difficult to watch Steven Soderburgh's debut, Sex, Lies and Videotape without it's legend getting in the way. 
It basically changed the way movies were made. The their were others like the Coens' Blood Simple or Sam Raimi and The Evil Dead; films that were independently funded before being sold to distributors and became applauded and successful but Sex, Lies and Videotape was the birth of the proliferation of American independent cinema of the 90's.

Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, it was acquirered by Miramax and the rest is history.
I guess the beauty of it being made was it's basically an avant-garde soap opera, that wasn't made at the time but you could probably see it's roots in Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge or the like but there are similarities- four main characters shopping sheets and reciting chunks of lofty dialogue; there are the 2 sisters Andie Macdowall and Laura San Giacomo. Andie Macdowall is married to Peter Gallegher and he's having an affair with her sister. Meanwhile Peter Gallegher's old school friend, James Spader is coming to stay...Andie Macdowall is a bored housewife - San Giacomo is just the opposite, free spirited without any guilt about what she might be doing to her sister. Gallegher just a bit of a self important Jag and Spade is a weird... something. You can't get much of a reading from him on what he's about. He has told Macdowall that he's impotent but later reveals that he interviews woman about their sexual histories on videotape as a way of connecting with them in an intimate way, we guess.
If anything the film should be called Lies, Videotape and Sex, if by order of what the film features. I guess at the end of the 80's, even the hint of Sex was enough for people to get excited about- Wait, I remember the end of the 80's. It was.
There's not actually any sex, at least not by today's standards though they sure do talk it out. But I can see the point, that we're probably watching this film out of voyeuristic tendencies for whatever reasons and Andie Macdowall and Peter Gallegher are disturbed by these videotapes; it's saying that the act of sex isn't the only way of being infidelidous- there's affairs of emotion, where you share intimacy just by talking about these things with another person.
I get that and I like exploring that idea but I kinda feel the writing is a bit stagey. I don't know if this film would have been so successful today but I guess that's the beauty of being the first- everyone remembers your place but you don't necessarily need to be very good...


I watched Sex Lies and Videotape (1989) on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with The Scouting Book For Boys (2009)...