Rating: R | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: August 4th, 1989 (USA)
Studio: Miramax
Director(s): Steven Soderbergh
Writer(s): Steven Soderbergh

Never take advice from someone you don’t know intimately.

Here’s the film that put frequent indie/mainstream crossover directing powerhouse Steven Soderbergh on the cinematic map. I honestly wasn’t quite sure what to expect considering all the hype surrounding it. For some reason I thought there was an NC-17 controversy swirling around its release before finally earning an R-rating and was intrigued about what could possibly have caused it. So, to my surprise, it proved much tamer than anticipated with no nudity and just the frequent swearing to even approach that R.

The film instead proved itself to be an intelligent, witty character piece driven almost entirely by its dialogue (hence the Oscar nomination). It isn’t as much about the actions of the characters on-screen than it is how they express themselves verbally to each other—and how they see themselves. sex, lies, and videotape is a story about people finding out who they really are and seeing how their actions affect the direction their lives will go.

The acting needs to be perfect in order for the dialogue to drive the story, and, for the most part, it is. Andie MacDowell’s Anne initially seems to broad with over-amplified expressions that lend an inauthenticity. As the film continued, though, one discovers that’s just who Anne is. She’s self-conscious and always weighing her words before she speaks. She’s aware of her own naïveté and therefore seems less intelligent than she relaly is. By the end of the film, I realized MacDowell gave one of my favorite performances in it.

Peter Gallagher does sleazy to perfection—his John is the bottom two forms of humanity, after all. Laura San Giacomo is wonderful as Cynthia, Anne’s always acting-out sister that everyone labeled perfect as a child. Her explosive behavior is fantastic as she tries to ruin the lives of those who love her without realizing the consequences she’ll face as a result. There’s also a nice cameo from Steven Brill (writer of the Mighty Ducks trilogy and frequent Adam Sandler collaborator) as a drunken barfly that adds some effective comic relief.

The real breakthrough, however, is James Spader. He plays Graham with so much innocence and aloofness that you’re not quite sure how to take his “hobby” when it’s first described. His performance counteracts all the filthy deeds being done by those around him as he tries his best to right wrongs from his past. When the tables are turned for him to finally confront himself, we’re treated with the best acting in the movie. The video ambush by both MacDowell and Gallagher perfectly juxtaposes the emotions everyone feels.

When Graham says that he never could take advice from someone he didn’t know intimately, he meant someone he never slept with. Through the course of the film, Soderbergh seems to take us on a journey that shows how being intimate can occur on levels beyond the physical. Graham’s use of video interviews about people’s sex lives allow his subjects to hear for themselves what they have been doing with their lives. It lets them really know the atrocities they may have committed and the adulterous ways in which they ruin the lives of those they love.

We never find out what was so horrible in Graham’s youth that he’s spent nine years rehabilitating himself (we can guess from the fact he was best friends with Gallagher’s character), but the man he became—the one he wanted to be—was someone who cares about the world. He wasn’t a selfish pervert making these tapes for personal use. He made them for those he taped as much as himself.

Graham saw the look in Cynthia’s face when she came to his apartment and knew she was harboring something deep inside her beneath the sexuality she used to hide it. By letting her express her pain through sex, he allows her to open up to herself and listen to her conscience. So, maybe Graham is right. Maybe he’s not the one giving them advice on an intimate emotional level. Maybe they’re getting it from someone even closer: themselves.

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Andie MacDowell in SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE.