Sex, Lies and Videotape: Screener Gods be willing, I’ll be reviewing The Knick over on Cinemax next month. It’s a 10-episode period medical drama starring Clive Owen, which doesn’t exactly scream “Must See TV.” The hook is that each hour is directed by Steven Soderbergh, which was more than enough to get me interested. Cinemax has already greenlit a second season with Soderbergh again attached to direct the episodes, and this has got me thinking about the role he’ll play over the course of the series. The saying goes that movies are a director’s medium, and TV a writer’s, so The Knick as an intersection between one of today’s most evocative (and retired?) film directors and a serial format has me intrigued.
As such, I’m going back through Soderbergh’s catalogue to catch up on some of his best-regarded work, and a couple of his more recent efforts. To start: Sex, Lies and Videotape, the 1989 drama of sexual discovery and marital atrophy that’s often cited as a landmark breakout for independent filmmaking. Rather than just give the 10-cent review of the film (which I liked just fine, especially since now I understand every weird James Spader-as-sexual-voyeur joke the internet loves to much), I just wanted to instead highlight a few bits of parallelism Soderbergh uses to visually convey the relationships of the film.
The four main characters of Sex, Lies and Videotape form a compass, with sisters Ann (Andie MacDowell) and Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo) on one pole of the Madonna-Whore axis, respectively, and John (Peter Gallagaher) and Graham (James Spader) positioned on opposite poles of the less insulting, but still frequent male sex-spectrum of Successful Asshole and Sensuous Screw-up. John, Ann’s husband, is introduced in his office describing how married life has up-ed his appeal to the opposite sex, but without addressing if he capitalizes on it, he seems pretty comfortable with the suburban life (the bag of chips links him to Ann, introduced complaining about garbage).
Then the scene cuts to the other side of the office, and we get this abstract, colorful painting that exposes us to John’s other side, the first of many cues to how different John and his wife are (even the curve of a pillow serves to add contrast). We soon see him with Ann’s sister, Cynthia, an artist whose household paintings are similarly vivid. The paintings themselves link into another of the film’s motifs, plants, which sprout up like weeds all over the place. John is characterized by overgrown, leafy plants to match his wild streak, while frigid, Christian Ann prefers more ornate, cultivated flowers, both as paintings, and in her presence.
The course of the film sees the stasis of the three characters interrupted by Spader’s Graham, a reserved, yet deeply sexual drifter who leads Ann to discover uncomfortable things about herself, and her husband’s activities. Graham’s proclivity, taping women as they talk about their sexual history, is the basis of the film’s approach to dialogue, with most scenes playing out like extended interviews. Soderbergh extends the depth of focus to expand or contract our impression of how close these characters are, even when they’re seated mere feet from one another.
The film uses its mis en scene to convey how each pairing is altered over the course of the film. The groan of the couch Ann sits on as she awkwardly makes small talk with Graham is echoed by the sound of John’s mattress straining when he and Cynthia share an afternoon tryst. By the end of the film, Ann, having learned of John’s indiscretions and moved on, has given up the homely whites for a livelier polka dot dress. More importantly, she’s traded in her prominently featured crucifix (which finds a mirror in Cynthia’s choker) for the pearl earrings that proved John was unfaithful. She’s forgiven her sister (through, what else, a potted plant as olive branch), while John is back at the office, dressed for failure in awful whites and a worse bowtie.
Sex, lies and Videotape is as loquacious as it is sensuous, but there’s a reason it’s a film, not a book or play. Being heard is one thing, but being seen, whether by a camera, or the eye, puts a face, and a person to the words. When John sees the tape Ann has made for Graham, the film could have ended on the TV static, which provides a parallel and bookend to the pavement zooming by in the film’s opening shot. He’s finally seen his wife; everything after this moment is just epilogue.