Sex Lies and Videotape: A Review

I first saw this Steven Soderbergh film, which had won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival when he was but 26 years old, when it debuted. I recall enjoying it at the time and delighting in the way that the yuppie 30-ish lawyer, John (Peter Gallagher), who was having an affair with his wife's sexy sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), got his comeuppance at the end. His life was wreathed in lies; finally one of them led to his undoing. Thus, when I saw it in 1989 I saw it as a sort of morality tale, a lesson to all of us of the kind of costs one pays when one pursues "extracurricular" affairs.

But I decided to check it out again, and my second viewing, last night, filled me with different reflections. Though I was finishing a pastoral stint in 1989, I didn't see any theological themes running through the movie at that time. Now, 19 years later, when theology is not a living occupation for me, all I seemed to notice were themes of brokenness and redemption. In short, Graham (James Spader), the college friend of John, who pays a visit to John and his wife Ann (Andie McDowell), becomes, as it were, the transformative figure through this work on the video-camera. By subjecting people (in his case willing women) to the "truth" of the videotape, and hearing their confessions, he becomes the instrument for them to change their lives. But then, in an interesting turn about, at the end of the film the tables are turned on him and the redeemer becomes the redeemed. He only becomes redeemed, however, if he destroys the work which had led to the liberation of the woman in the movie. Well, some of this needs some explanation, so here goes.

A Few Themes From the Movie

John and Ann's marriage relationship is built on deception and dissatisfaction. She is sexually repressed and obsessed with problems she can't control, and she reveals some of her repression to her therapist. Meanwhile her imperially-trim, ambitious, yuppie lawyer husband John is having regular sex capades with Ann's younger sister Cynthia. He denies the affair directly to Ann, though she has more than an inkling that it is true. Meanwhile, John's college roomate Graham stops in for a visit until he can find an apartment for himself in Baton Rouge. While there, with a mixture of apparently-innocent curiosity but growing intrusiveness, he begins to ask the women in John's life about marriage, intimacy and sex. Cynthia learns that Graham, who is impotent, films women talking about sex and then later masturbates while he watches those films. His "power," then is in getting the women to tell all, and perhaps show all, even though he is powerless to enjoy the closeness with them which they talk about. His "reality" is the video reality which he can create and freeze on the screen.

His "filming" of Cynthia so arouses her that it leads to the most incredible sexual experience that Cynthia and John enjoy, but then things seem to unravel for the triangle of John, Ann and Cynthia. Ann's suspicions of an affair are heightened, John begins to take careless risks at work (cancelling meetings with important clients), and Cynthia begins to feel more cold towards John. Finally, after discovering a pearl earring in her bedroom, Ann's feelings are confirmed, and she stalks away from home to visit Graham. It is significant for the film that she changes clothes here, away from her "proper" Southern belle-type dresses to jeans and a pullover. She, too, wants to be filmed by Graham. But midway in the filming, as he goes through the regular series of revealing questions about sex, Ann turns the tables and begins to ask Graham questions about his relationships, impotency and fears. Graham is confounded; he can't take the "turning of the tables," and he vainly struggles to regain his 'power position' as interrogator of Ann. But he can't, and he realizes that his life as a person living in a sea of deception and unreality is over.

Ann returns home to announce that her marriage to John is now over. Cynthia and she, who really had not been having much to do with each other, become reconciled, and begin to understand some of the longings within the other. Graham, too, sees that he must destroy the tapes of women, which were the symbol of his unconventional world of power, if he can hope to get beyond the lies and deception that control his world.

Redemption--Accomplished

The filming, which became the means for Cynthia, Ann and, finally, Graham, to change, now becomes something that has to be left behind as new life emerges. Instead of hiding behind the power mechanism of the camera, Graham and Ann begin tentatively to touch each other. The only one who seems to learn nothing through this experience is the one who seemingly had life by the tail throughout the movie--John. He had everything, it seemed: a nice home, lucrative job, obedient wife and the hot sister of his wife. But his world soon collapsed, and he is the only one who didn't have the strength, insight, courage or character to lay aside the deception he had been living and learn to embrace a new truth for himself. Thus, redemption was not only accomplished, but applied, but only to those who realize how screwed up they were. The means for this redemption, the "Christ-figure," if you will, was the most weak, vulnerable and "weird" person in the film--Graham. But his own weakness provided the occasion for others to discover their respective dependence on deception and lies, which led to their liberation. His soon followed. But only the lawyer remained "unsaved." So it will probably always be: we lawyers think we have a corner on truth and the world, as well as a method to get to those things. We therefore have the tendency more tenaciously to hold on to illusions and lies than to embrace new truth when it is put before us.

We all live with our lies and deceptions, whether or not sex and videotapes help bring them to our attention. Maybe a redeemer of an unlikely sort, has or will come into our lives with the possibility of freeing us. Do we recognize him/her?

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