It has long been said that director Steven Soderbergh’s seminal 1989 film Sex, Lies, and Videotape (styled as sex, lies and videotape) was the film to launch the independent movement. Granted, the concept of independent cinema (fluid though that definition is) has been around since the beginning of cinema.
United Artists, one of the leading production companies of the Golden Age of Hollywood, was, after all, founded in 1919 by director David W. Griffith and actors Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, who wanted to control their own interests rather than be tied to the large film studios.
The late 1980s, however, can be credited with bringing independent cinema away from the art house and closer to the mainstream than ever before.
The era coincided with the emergence of the annual Sundance Film Festival, spearheaded by Robert Redford and considered the foremost platform for American and international independent film.
There was, of course, also the birth of Miramax, the independent film production and distribution company founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Sex, Lies, and Videotape was one of the films to establish Miramax’s reputation as a leading independent film champion.
Written and directed by Soderbergh, Sex, Lies, and Videotape tells the story of Ann (Andie MacDowell), a woman trapped in a loveless marriage to John (Peter Gallagher).
By her own admission, Ann thinks sex is overrated, and has reached the point where she cannot even have sex with her husband, who is involved in a passionate sexual affair with Ann’s sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo).
When an old school friend of John’s, Graham (James Spader), moves back to town and asks to crash at John’s place until he finds a place of his own, his presence – and his personal project, for which he videotapes women talking about their most intimate sexual dalliances – shakes Ann, John and Cynthia’s lives to the bone.
With, at its core issues of stale marriage, infidelity and sibling rivalry, Sex, Lies, and Videotape struck a chord with audiences, and the film remains as fresh and relevant today as it was then.
Soderbergh, just 26 at the time, wrote the screenplay in just eight days during a trip to Los Angeles and made the film in five weeks in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He displays a startling maturity in his depiction of the complex lives of the protagonists and their approach to sex.
He handles the subject without ever resorting to nudity or unnecessary titillation. The film boasts no frills or cheap thrills.
Soderbergh, just 26 at the time, wrote the screenplay in just eight days during a trip to Los Angeles
Soderbergh draws out exceptional performances from his quartet of actors.
Spader, until then best known for a series of roles in so-called brat pack movies, was a revela-tion as the soft-spoken, detached Graham.
It is a restrained performance, as the actor slowly and assuredly reveals the layers to this complex man.
It takes time to establish whether his penchant for taping sexual confessions are the sign of a perverse or a troubled man, and Spader’s sympathetic performance is to be credited for that.
MacDowell earns oodles of sympathy as the timid housewife whose encounter with Graham proves the catalyst to taking charge of her own life. Like Spader, MacDowell gives a quiet and nuanced performance.
Gallagher and San Giaomo are equally well-cast and both avoid the traps of caricaturising John and Cynthia as merely sex-obsessed people, instead imbuing them with the flaws that characterise us all.
Soderbergh, of course, went on to become one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed writer/directors (often adding producer, cinematographer and editor to his credits) all the while displaying equal deftness with comedy, drama and action.
Sex, Lies, and Videotape debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1989, going on to win the Palme D’Or, the critics’ Fipresci award and Best Actor for James Spader.
The film also won an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
After wowing the festival circuit, the film was released in cinemas across the US in August 1989, to universal acclaim; and continues to be considered a milestone to this day – it was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 2006.