Synopsis
A sexually repressed woman's husband is having an affair with her sister. The arrival of a visitor with a rather unusual fetish changes everything.
1989 Directed by Steven Soderbergh
A sexually repressed woman's husband is having an affair with her sister. The arrival of a visitor with a rather unusual fetish changes everything.
Seks yalanlari, Sexo, Mentiras e Vídeo, Sexo, mentiras y video, Sex, psemata kai videotainies, Sekkusu to uso to bideotêpu, Seks, klamstwa i kasety video, Sexe, mensonge et vidéos, Seks, laži i video trake, Sex, Shkarim V'Videotape
I was always peeved that this film won the Palme d'Or over Spike Lee's film. So much that when I first watched it, a few years ago when I was getting started in film, I turned it off after 15 minutes and claimed it to be one of those film classics that I didn't approve of. Because I was being edgy back then. Finally coming back for a full viewing on a Saturday afternoon, I prove my young self-worth wrong again. It's truly amazing at just how mesmerizing, audacious, and downright sexy Soderbergh’s debut is.
It's been said that Sex, Lies, and Videotape is the independent film that got mainstream audiences into independent films and while that was certainly true…
A movie about sex with no sex in it!
This is a weird movie. Having just seen All That Jazz, it’s bizarre to me that these two films are only 10 years apart. It might as well be 25. It feels so firmly planted in the 90s.
Great breakout for Soderbergh and great performances all around. It’s a cast of 4 and they all hold their own. I was expecting Andie Macdowell to impress me but Laura San Giacomo was incredible! I’d never seen her before and she gave a equally powerful performance.
I don’t know why I liked this movie. I don’t think I really understand it, but it sticks with you.
-Sex as a form of illusional self-empowerment AND a justification of living a double life
-Lies as a mechanism to justify said double life and a means to psychologically deny your own problems as a social being
-Videotape as a form of distancing yourself from your surrounding reality, beginning by your own, and confronting yourself and your deceptive fantasies from a third-person perspective
From Polanski and Zanussi (interestingly enough, both debuts) to Pasolini, the third party triggers the hidden emotional mechanisms of a marriage slowly disintegrating to shatter it to pieces, but passively, not directly interfering in what is fundamentally wrong with the protagonistic relationship, but rising to the surface the unspoken truths that are causing a consciously unspoken lack…
Only an actor of the caliber of James Spader can play an incel and volcel at the same time.
Been wanting to watch this for a while, and I might just have a new screenplay gold standard.
i just can't help but think how much better this would be if it were directed by a woman 🤔
Addiction and angst hidden under the sheets, the erotic power of words taking a strong precedence over what would usually be sexually explicit imagery demanded by the studios. Long before the paranoid psycho-sexual tension of Eyes Wide Shut graced the screen, sex, lies, and videotape was already batting in a similar ballpark. Even with its clothes on Soderbergh’s debut is as ominously voyeuristic as they come, an unmissable early work teeming with complex characters, albeit slightly stunted by its unsuitably optimistic endnote.
93/100
Perhaps my greatest cinematic "rule-proving" exception, as I generally hate overt therapy onscreen yet am reliably hypnotized by this film's relentless emotional probing. It begins, of course, in an actual therapist's office, but Graham usurps that role almost immediately; Spader's hushed, weirdly deliberate cadence—the sense of quiet invasiveness—sort of masks the degree to which his barrage of (very) personal questions, both in taped sessions and ostensibly everyday conversation, echo what a determined mental-health professional might ask. The story is basically a (heteronormative) version of Teorema in which candor replaces fucking as the destructive/liberating force...which actually does sound like something I'd adore, so there you go. But this is also just an astonishingly confident, accomplished debut (assuming we discount his…
I actually think all movies should be titled as the three most important elements in the film.
Shrek: Ogre, swamp, and onions
Citizen Kane: Newspapers, snow globes, and Rosebud
Psycho: Showers, taxidermy, and blood
Velocipastor: Ninjas, Merman, and dragon warrior
La La Land: Emma, fucking, Stone
Soderbergh and I have had a weird history (nothing sexual, I promise). One of great admiration for his reluctance to become boxed in and respect for his willingness to put himself through all the experimental hoops, time and time again. Be it through inventing his own distribution models to his remixing of beloved classics, It’s become increasingly clear that the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” would have Mr. Soderbergh reaching straight for the ‘retire’ button for the fifth time this week.
But I’ve never found myself truly falling for any of his films. Funnily enough, the first Ocean’s film would have always been my favourite, which seems somewhat confessional to admit. Should I feel weirdly guilty? That…
Criterion Collection Spine #938
What would you reveal if the camera was pointed at you during a seductive interview?
"I remember reading somewhere that men learn to love the person that they're attracted to, and that women become more and more attracted to the person that they love."
Director Steven Soderbergh's debut feature pulls back the covers on the taboo of sexual pleasure, strained relationship dynamics, and detached intimacy. Sex, Lies, and Videotape is an excellently acted and stylized film that I appreciate a lot more now looking back at it, than I did while actually immersed in this deeply personal story of lust and constraint.
Spoilers:
In the story, we have Andie MacDowell's character Ann who is a sexually…
i really do not know what to think about the movie. i liked it a lot but at the same time i didn’t. that’s why 3 starts
on the other hand, everything was neat including the actors play
for some reason i can make a parallel with the “Breakfast club” here, even though the characters were not locked in the same room, and they knew each other pretty well, but it still is an adult version of the movie
This is still Soderbergh's best. A wonderfully tender film. The 35mm image is beautiful. The ideas even more. It's always like a glass of ice water.
Horny James Spader Double Feature!
Of course way less shocking than Crash, but more devastating. The characters are explored in a very real way with very little exposition. A small, beautiful film about some pretty broken people.
Watched on Criterion Blu-ray with commentary from Soderbergh and Neil LaBute
Commentary was not as enlightening as I hoped, but still entertaining. LaBute cuts Soderbergh off with overbearing praise so many times while he's trying to say something I'd find valuable which was annoying. But they seem to be pals and it was nice hearing them shoot the shit, even if a lot of it had little to do with the film. The movie still rocks hardcore. This isn't technically part of the Soderthon but also, it is.
For a film with so much (good) dialogue, there was never a dull moment. Had me intrigued throughout but missed that final gut punch that would’ve made me rate it higher. Still very good.
This is a well written first film from soderbergh. While I’ve only seen a handful of his films, it’s cool to kind of see his themes and style in small doses in this movie. The cast was great and the dialogue was great too, I just wasn’t as invested as I wanted to be. This is certainly an interesting one though that I may have to return to.
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