I have a friend who says golf is not only better than sex, butlasts longer. The argument in "sex, lies and videotape" is thatconversation is also better than sex - more intimate, morevoluptuous - and that with our minds we can do things to each otherthat make sex, that swapping of sweat and sentiment, seem merelytroublesome. Of course, this argument is all a mind game, and sexitself, sweat and all, is the prize for the winner. That's whatmakes the conversation so erotic.
The movie takes place in Baton Rouge, La., and it tells thestory of four people in their early 30s whose sex lives areseriously confused. One is a lawyer named John (Peter Gallagher),who is married to Ann (Andie MacDowell) but no longer sleeps withher. Early in the film, we hear her telling her psychiatrist thatthis is no big problem; sex is really overrated, she thinks,compared to larger issues such as how the Earth is running out ofplaces to dispose of its garbage. Her husband does not, however,think sex is overrated and is conducting a passionate affair withhis wife's sister, Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), who has alwaysresented the goody-goody Ann.
An old friend turns up in town. His name is Graham (JamesSpader), and he was John's college roommate. Nobody seems quiteclear what he has been doing in the years since college, but he's oneof those types you don't ask questions about things like that,because you have the feeling you don't want to know the answers.He's dangerous, not in a physical way, but through his insinuatingintelligence, which seems to see through people.
He moves in. Makes himself at home. One day he has lunchwith Ann, and they begin to flirt with their conversation, turningeach other on with words carefully chosen to occupy the treacherousground between eroticism and a proposition. She says she doesn'tthink much of sex, but then he tells her something that gets herinterested: He confesses that he is impotent. It is, I think, afundamental fact of the human ego in the sexually active years thatmost women believe they can end a man's impotence, just as most menbelieve they are heaven's answer to a woman's frigidity. If thiswere true, impotence and frigidity would not exist, but if hope didnot spring eternal, not much else would spring, either.
The early stages of "sex, lies and videotape" are alanguorous, but intriguing, setup for the tumult that follows. Theadultery between John and Cynthia has the usual consequences andcreates the usual accusations of betrayal, but the movie (and, Ithink, the audience) is more interested in Graham's sexualpastimes. Unable to satisfy himself in the usual ways, hevideotapes the sexual fantasies of women, and then watches them.This is a form of sexual assault; he has power not over theirbodies but over their minds, over their secrets, and I suspect thatthe most erotic sentence in his vocabulary is "She's actuallytelling me this stuff!"
Ann is horrified by Graham's hobby - and fascinated - andbefore long, the two of them are in front of his camera, in a sceneof remarkable subtlety and power, both discovering that, for them,sex is only the beginning of their mysteries. This scene, andindeed the whole movie, would not work unless the direction andacting were precisely right (this is the kind of movie where aslightly wrong tone could lead to a very bad laugh), but Spader andMacDowell do not step wrong. Indeed, Spader's performancethroughout the film is a kind of risk-taking. Can you imagine thechallenge an actor faces in taking the kind of character I havedescribed and making him not only intriguing but seductive? Spaderhas the kind of sexual ambiguity of the young Brando or Dean; heseems to suggest that if he bypasses the usual sexual approaches itis because he has something more interesting up, or down, hissleeve.
The story of "sex, lies and videotape" is by now part ofmovie folklore: how writer-director Steven Soderbergh, at 29, wrotethe screenplay in eight days during a trip to Los Angeles, how thefilm was made for $1.8 million, how it won the Palme d'Or at thisyear's Cannes Film Festival, as well as the best actor prize forSpader. I am not sure it is as good as the Cannes jury apparentlyfound it; it has more intelligence than heart, and is more cleverthan enlightening. But it is never boring, and there are momentswhen it reminds us of how sexy the movies used to be, back in thedays when speech was an erogenous zone.
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