Amazon.com Essential Video
Winner of the Palm d'Or and Best Actor awards at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival,
sex, lies, and videotape transformed the independent film industry and turned writer-director Steven Soderbergh into the envy of aspiring filmmakers everywhere. Sly, seductive, and coolly intelligent, the movie explores the sexual shenanigans and personal preoccupations of its four central characters, revolving around a selfish lawyer (Peter Gallagher) who responds to his wife by having an affair with her free-spirited sister (Laura San Giacomo). But when the lawyer's college roommate (James Spader) arrives for an unexpectedly extended visit, the neglected wife (Andie MacDowell) is surprisingly responsive to his seductive hobby of videotaping women as they describe their sexual fantasies. It's his way of compensating for impotence, but the curious wife considers this a sexual challenge, and Soderbergh turns
sex, lies, and videotape into a fascinating chamber piece that puts a decidedly different spin on the consequences of infidelity. Balanced on a risky and finely tuned performance by Spader, the film delivers frisky passion and emotional intrigue, and yet much of its allure is found in the exchange of secrets and the hidden mysteries of sexual desire.
--Jeff Shannon
Review
The feature debut by 26-year-old writer/director/editor Steven Soderbergh galvanized the independent film movement of the late '80s and '90s with its breakout success leading out of the Sundance Film Festival. Soderbergh's late twentysomethings are so alienated and sexually dysfunctional that voyeuristic, videotaping onanist Graham's professions of relative healthiness ring ironically true. In these warped lives, the mediating presence of the video camera becomes a means to self-awareness, yet human connection can happen only via a machine. Winner of the Audience Prize at Sundance, sex, lies and videotape commanded international attention by winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival (as well as the Best Actor prize for James Spader's subtle performance as Graham), setting the stage for the award-winning prominence of American independent cinema at the Cannes festival in subsequent years. Picked up and aggressively marketed by Miramax, sex, lies and videotape grossed 26 million dollars, raising the bar for an "indie" hit, establishing Miramax as the most prominent purveyor and savvy marketer of independent film, and refocusing attention on non-Hollywood product as a vital creative and entertainment alternative to blockbusters. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
DVD ~ Steven Soderbergh
DVD ~ Steven Shainberg
DVD ~ Adrian Lyne
DVD ~ Ingmar Bergman
DVD ~ Louis Malle
