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52 out of 71 people found the following comment useful :-
A MAGNIFICENT, UNDERRATED FILM THAT'S LIKE NOTHING I'VE EVER SEEN!!!, 17 July 2001

Author: mattymatt4ever from Jersey City, NJ

"sex, lies and videotape" is a low-key drama that REALLY showcases Stephen Soderbergh's true talents. The film was made on a modest budget and is mainly dialogue-driven, yet I was deeply fascinated from start to finish. This is another film that sends out a message to all aspiring directors: You don't need a large budget to make a truly great motion picture! Soderbergh hasn't received worldwide fame until recently with the hit "Traffic." As much as I loved "Traffic" I urge everyone--who's curious of Soderbergh's work--go check out this initial effort.

The element that impressed me the most was the succint, yet brutally realistic dialogue. I've never been more impressed with a film's dialogue and actually screamed out, "Now THAT'S how people talk!" The interactions between each character are so intense and down to earth, and gets the audience deeply engaged. James Spader shines in this career-making performance as a documentary filmmaker who gets his rocks off filming women talking about sex. We never know why he developed this unusual interest, but that's what's so great. And the way Spader carries his character is so subtle and powerful. His character is quiet and mysterious, and he expresses this enigmatic role perfectly with every silence, every facial gesture, every tone of voice. That's another element that I loved. Soderbergh expresses to his audience that people don't always mean what they say. And you can tell by every hint of body language. During these character interplays, you get a feel for what the characters are really thinking with their every subtle nuance. And that's what creates most of the film's tension.

And of course, the film has great depth and treats its subject with the greatest of maturity. In one scene, Spader interviews this young woman who talks about her first experience with masturbation. That could've easily been transformed into something gratuitous and heavy-handed. The subjects of sex and infidelity are treated with a sense of reality, and I'm sure many couples who are involved in relationships where one of the mates are cheating will find the whole situation with Andie McDowell and Peter Gallagher haunting. Everything is low-key and some might find the rhythm slow-moving, but that's what I liked about it. It slowly unfolds and takes its time developing the characters and their situations. Many filmmakers would've taken the subject of infidelity and made it into a melodramatic soap. But Soderbergh is very patient. He never once thinks, "Maybe the audience is not interested anymore," and speeds things up. He goes at his own pace, and works with it consistently.

I don't know if others will get the same effect I did out of this movie, but appreciate a film that respects its characters and respects its dialogue. Sure, I also appreciate a film with massive entertainment value, but other times I'd rather watch something with depth and realism. This is one of those films that just has a subtle energy. Looking at "sex, lies and videotape" from the outside, it's hard to explain the power of Soderbergh's masterpiece. All I say is go see for yourself! I hope you'll be just as astounded.

My score: 10 (out of 10)

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27 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :-
9/10, 3 September 2003

Author: desperateliving from Canada

Soderbergh's startlingly mature debut is a small, intelligent, intimate drama, and talky in the most watchable way. His script concerning a frigid woman (MacDowell), her husband (Gallagher) and her extrovert sister (San Giacomo) who he's sleeping with, and his old college friend (Spader), is frank and open, which is precisely its charm -- Soderbergh doesn't pussyfoot around peoples' problems and the need to be open with them. Indeed, Spader's character takes a certain pride in his: "I've got a lot of problems. But they belong to me." Yet Soderbergh's voyeur approach is sexy, as he holds back from anything explicit and lets the words do the eroticizing, slyly examining and critiquing sexual attitudes. As the force who comes into these peoples' lives, Spader's character sets up his psychoanalytic questioning right from the start, innocently scrutinizing MacDowell. The film is incredibly well-acted, especially by Spader, who's delivery and nuance is perfect, and who always seems to be hinting at undercurrents below the surface. Even though the focus stays on just these four characters, this is a minor masterpiece. 9/10

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25 out of 37 people found the following comment useful :-
The same as you learned in Sunday School, only the exemplars are different, 25 July 2003
Author: Casey Machula (caseymachula@earthlink.net) from Flagstaff, AZ

Sex, Lies and Videotape will probably strike the average viewer as irredeemably degenerate, maybe even perverted, since voyeurism is still considered aberrant behavior. But as far as this film is concerned, that's the appearance, not the reality. Whereas the drama revolves to a certain extent around the voyeuristic masturbation of an impotent man, the heart and soul of the film is an unrelenting, hard driving psychological siege on the biggest erogenous zone of all: the brain.

This film is about sex. But it's not about the frothy swapping of fluids and feelings. It's about honesty, without which one can't have intimacy, which is to sexual stimulation what the water valve is to the hydrant. From beginning to end, we see this theme brought into focus by the dramatic contrast between two different relationships – the one based on lies and deceit, the other based upon honesty. And guess which one wins out in the long run?

In a sense, it's what your mother and Sunday school teacher taught you all along. But what makes this movie way more interesting than your mother or Sunday school teacher is the level of honesty it suggests is necessary as the basis of a healthy relationship. Ann (Andy McDowell), for example, an acceptably moral person tells the voyeuristic masturbator `You got a problem.' He replies by adding that he has a lot of problems. But, he says, `They belong to me.'

Somehow, the openness about one's problems renders their bile and poison ineffective. `Lilies that fester,' said Shakespeare, `smell far worse than weeds.'

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41 out of 69 people found the following comment useful :-
Calling All Proclivities, 18 August 2002

Author: dataconflossmoor from United States

A classic case of where the mechanics of marriage become the insidious culprit to sexual indiscretion...John Millaney is the overly mortgaged white collar malcontent who is callous with his regard toward marital fidelity...He has an affair with his wife's sister, Cynthia Bishop, she is a morally bankrupt loner who resents her sister's relatively structured existence...Gram Dalton is the voyeuristic creep who preys on the dissatisfaction of married women with the seven year itch syndrome, and other disgruntled and socially misplaced women as well!! He perceives vulnerability in women to be sexually stimulating!! His ultimate undoing is his creative resolution to boredom, and this basically backfires in an absolutely horrendous way!!! Ann Millaney (John's wife) is torn between a perfect marriage and an emotional millennium.. She is convinced that not only does doing things her way work, IT MUST!!. It is not necessary to have all the missing pieces to the puzzle in her marriage because she realizes the ramifications of such a heinous plight!! What presses everyone's buttons? Is it kink, is it bi, or bi for the night, is it emotional nurturing?...James Spader's character (Gram Dalton) has a life that is based on comparative stability, everybody (mostly women) can expose their lewd nuances while he keeps his a secret, once someone has tampered with his quirkiness which is close to the vest, he has no ability to cope, thus, he exaggerates his mistakes!!!All of the characters in this film are hit with the grim reality that not accepting responsibility accomplishes nothing....They all engage in a form of permanent self destruction!! Being flippant about immorality has a definite rude awakening!! What seems complicated is really very simple, and the depraved intrigue of perversion merely brings out all of their most dreaded skeletons in the closet!!!! Seldom in a film is there such a precise poignancy about things that bother people that really should not bother them at all...This is what gets them into so much trouble!! Steven Soderbergh's production efforts in this film were merely a harbinger of things to come, as he has gone on to produce and direct fabulous movies ("Good Night and Good Luck", "Syrianna", and "Traffic", to name but a few!!) This film effectuates a noteworthy devotion to an unintentional and sordid sexual authenticity!! Sundance is a network for the non-conventional.."Sex Lies and Videotape" is testament to the fact that what appears gray flannel is not always the panacea people would like to believe it to be!! Marital upheaval is all about emotional affliction in this movie. Latent reactions are a manifestation of psychological insecurity. You are never going to get what you want out of a relationship because you don't know what that is!! This was the summon substance of what the film "Sex Lies and Videotape" was all about!! This film had a personal dedication to it as well!!

A very well made film, I give it 5 stars!!!

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16 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
a terrific, slowly unfolding debut with sublime performances, 4 July 2004
Author: Filmjack3 from United States

Steven Soderbergh, as observed by other reviewers and critics, did take inspiration from the kinds of films Eric Rohmer's been making for decades. These kinds of films, as Sex, Lies, and Videotape is at its core, about people in morality crises, and how they get out of them or linger with how they act is the point. Some people may not like the film, therefore, as nothing incredibly outrageous or spectacular will occur. For all the attention Soderbergh received (Golden Palm, Independent Spirits, Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, immediate recognition), he's made a small film, and it's not as ambitious as some of his later, greater works like Out of Sight and Traffic. But as a revealing, intimate character study, with an often clever and controlled mis-en-scene, Soderbergh shows his skills were already honed at twenty-six.

Without good acting the film would be like a hopeless rendition of a foreign film, but with the four lead performances from McDowell, Gallagher, Gia Como, and Spader (his is most under-stated of the bunch for me) these are as fully realized characters as Soderbergh could get. They all must've taken something about the characters in the script, because for all the flaws and misconceptions and fears these characters carry, they are human. Even Gallagher's John, who's the conniving husband and lawyer, is recognizably as he is even when he's comparatively lesser than Graham and Ann. Only one side character, the barfly played by Steven Brill, gets the film to immediately halt with uncomfortable humor. But the rest of the film, loaded with innuendo (there's not one shot of nudity, similar to a Rohmer film like Chloe in the Afternoon, where the cover art of the film is rather misleading to those looking for a film with breasts and other parts) and involving drama, doesn't shake its foundations until maybe the last five to ten minutes. And when it does, it does not make the film a lost cause, at least for me. Begs to be seen again, though with maybe a year or so between viewings. A-

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16 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Iced-Tea, Anyone?, 14 August 2002
Author: Lee-107 (leena_d@yahoo.com) from India

Why does Graham prefer iced tea so much? He offers it to Ann when she visits him for the first time at his apartment. Does the same when Cynthia pays him a visit. When he and Ann are having their first real conversation in the restaurant there's a glass of iced tea next to him, while Ann has a glass of white wine. Besides being a probable leitmotif, it's something that, seems to me is a part of Graham's character. He comes to live in that town to get away, to find a closure to his past. He ends up providing closure to the lives of these three characters. Let's imagine a scenario sans Graham - a phase in the life of a woman whose husband is having an extra-marital affair with her sister. She's suspicious but he denies. She finds evidence to prove that he's having an affair with her sister and decides she's had it, she's leaving her husband. Do you think this might have been the conclusion of this scenario? I think not. As Ann rightly says to Graham, that she would have left her husband anyway, but the reason she's doing it now, is because of him. She thinks sex is overrated, her sister seems to believe in the opposite and here comes a man whose profession, for all practical purposes is having women talk about sex. Ann's therapist is a foil to Graham. While he dispenses his advice and listens patiently to Ann, Graham is the all important catalyst that helps her make a practical decision in her life. He also aids in her real sexual awakening. Before Graham, sex, for Ann was incidental. Now it takes on a different perspective.

One might say that in making women talk so intimately to him about sex, he sort of breaks the ice on a topic that is more or less socially tabooed. His is a presence that evokes trust in the most introverted of women, making them confide in him and by doing so have an almost cathartic experience. I think the iced tea motif of Graham's character fits in here. Beyond his trademark black-shirt, blue denim attire, it is the only other element related to him that is conspicuously stated. That's my conjecture anyway!

Needless to say, James Spader is superb as Graham. He manages to evoke many of the nuances of Graham's character by subtle, volatile facial expressions. Andie McDowell is also great as Ann. Hers is a really sensitive and touching performance. Peter Gallagher and Laura San Giacomo are both equally good. The music for this film is appropriately minimal and poignant. Great effort by Soderbergh, who I'm glad to hear has come back to his experimental film roots with his recent film 'Full Frontal'.

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22 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :-
Lies and Videotape, but mostly talk, 31 May 2004

Author: canadude

Yes, "Sex, Lies and Videotape" is about sex, lies and videotape. And, while the sex is mostly served in dialogue-form and not a single shot of nudity is present, there is some graphic lying and some explicit videotape. Kinky, right?

Well, not really. "Sex, Lies and Videotape" is Steven Sodenbergh's first film and it's not a bad one. It's just not entirely worthy of the praise it received, at Cannes for example. The situations in the film do create a fair amount of tension that moves the story along. But then, it'd be hard not to have some tension in a film about a woman whose husband is cheating on her with her sister, while she starts interacting with a stranger who is the husband's old college roommate and has a strange videotape fetish and may or may not be a pathological liar. (How do you believe someone who just confessed to having been a pathological liar to not being one anymore? The film doesn't really riddle that one for us.)

Clearly, these characters clash together. But it's not as heated or interesting as it was in later Sodenbergh's films like the spectacular "Traffic." The dialogues in "Sex, Lies and Videotape" range from good to incredibly awkward. But the real strength of the film is the actors. While James Spader clearly stands out - I have never seen him deliver such a subtle performance where every scene simply works for him - Andie McDowell is phenomenal, Peter Gallagher playing the scummy, treacherous husband yuppie lawyer type is great and Laura San Giacomo as the vulgar sister / lover is fabulous. Their performances make the script work, which, under normal circumstances with inferior actors would have seemed rather silly.

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15 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Do NOT see it alone!!!, 10 November 2001

Author: ivmeer from Chicago, IL

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Regarding the commenter who suggested seeing this movie alone, I have to emphatically disagree! I saw it alone last night for the first time and I've been climbing the walls all day wanting to discuss it with someone.

This is the best movie that I've seen in years. Peter Gallagher does another great turn (maybe the first?) in a series of handsome-as-a-plastic-mannequin-and-just-as-warm roles. Laura San Giacomo is brassy and funny.

Andie MacDowell, whom I've never thought much of, was totally in her element here, and her southern accent just *makes* her part.

James Spader, though, was what really made this a great movie. His responses are so natural, and he betrays all that his character is thinking with a single expression. I watched his smile change from saying "Okay, you figured it out, aren't you proud of yourself?" to "Okay, you're right. I admit it." to "I'm really vulnerable and just wish we'd stop talking about this, okay?" in the course of about 5-10 seconds of film with not a word of dialogue spoken. He was amazing.

I have been wondering if this film was much more shocking when it first came out, and the medium of home video was fairly new. I'm betting that the idea of videotaping (with sound and everything) such intimate conversations was really quite unsettling in 1989. Now it seems pretty normal. I was really expecting something much more sordid than what I got in this movie. It wasn't salacious, just...really honest.

This last paragraph is a spoiler: I've been thinking about Graham's wanting closure and Ann telling him that he couldn't get it by coming to see the woman who broke his heart. It is John, who, in trying to hurt Graham and grabbing at one last straw who ultimately gives it to him. When he talks of sleeping with Graham's ex, even "before you were having trouble" it puts the perfect seal on Graham's past.

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12 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Soderbergh's Debut Film Mesmerizes, 25 May 2004

Author: Moviecaine from Las Vegas, Nevada

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, And Videotape was all the rage at Cannes in 1989, winning the Golden Palm Award for Soderbergh and the Best Actor Award for James Spader. Soderbergh was also nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay. Despite the lurid, voyeuristic title, this film is not really about sex at all. It's about intimacy and what it takes to reach that with another person. Lies are always a barrier to that, but who would have thought that videotape would be so useful in revealing so much about people, although it actually shows little? James Spader, late of "The Practice" fame, is outstanding as the old college friend that returns to his friend's town, and stirs up the truth about each character. Peter Gallagher, currently in "The O.C.", is equally great as the lawyer, husband, who uses those in his orbit without regard to any consequences. Andie MacDowell is absolutely perfect as the conservative wife, who thinks that sex is overrated. Laura San Giacomo, from "Just Shoot Me", is also perfectly cast as the sexpot sister of MacDowell. All the actors, who weren't too well known at the time, give bull's eye performances. Rarely has any of them been as good since. Soderbergh's direction and screenplay are also responsible for the success of the film. Very little actually happens in the movie in terms of action, scene changes, and technical aspects of film in general. It's reminiscent of the many talky European films that are often very frank but where little happens. However, there is not a wasted moment in this film. Soderbergh gives us one of the most honest, mature depictions of the barriers to intimacy ever put on film. In doing so, he shows us that the characters are not free of their own ulterior motivations, even though some appear to change for the better. What is significant is that barriers to intimacy are just as difficult to face as the events that precipitate our facing them. The brief final shot speaks volumes with no dialog. ***1/2 of 4 stars.

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13 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Spader is amazing!, 8 November 2001

Author: Aphex97 (Aphex97@yahoo.com) from College

Spader's character was the reason I enjoyed the film so much. I could identify with him and his dilemma. It seemed he felt like a stranger in an even stranger land. Who were these humans that seem so happy in the same world he could not find happiness within? What is this life we live? More importantly, what is the point? Why bother? His great battle with existence was a philosophical one. He, like myself, felt infinite sadness over the knowledge that are no concrete answers...

The movie is also interesting because it attacks the main sexual organ, the mind. Graham while trying to distance himself from the human experience by capturing sex confessionals on videotape, perhaps unwittingly became more intimate with his "partners." Roger Ebert points out that the films' argument is that conversation is better than sex.

Personally, I think the movie is about trying to find happiness with another person. Some Modest Mouse song lyrics come to mind. "And it's hard to be a human being/ And it's harder as anything else/ and I'm lonesome when you're around/ I'm never lonesome when I'm by myself" Graham finds it hard to be a human being and live in this human world full of values that he finds strange, confusing, and most importantly unfulfilling. What do you do when your ideology and needs don't mesh in the society you live within? How does one deal with feelings of loneliness in a society that spurns him? This movie is about one man's way.

James Spader does such an excellent job as this character. In fact, great acting all around by the entire cast and excellent writing and directing by Mr. Soderbergh. Go see this movie now!

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