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Sex, Lies, and Videotape [DVD]
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Genre | Drama |
Format | DVD, Anamorphic, Dolby, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen |
Contributor | Laura San Giacomo, Robert F. Newmyer, James Spader, John Hardy, Steven Soderbergh, Peter Gallagher, Andie MacDowell, Outlaw Productions See more |
Language | English |
Runtime | 1 hour and 40 minutes |
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Product Description
With smoldering sensuality and biting humor, the surprising relationship between the three title subjects is revealed in sex, lies, and videotape, the most talked-about erotic comedy of the decade. James Spader (TV's "Boston Legal") ran away with the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his brilliantly understated and seductive performance as Graham, a long-lost college friend who drifts back into town and into the lives of John, a self-involved philanderer, his angelic wife Ann, and her saucy sister Cynthia. One by one, each is drawn into the very "personal project" Graham is working on, leaving the relationships between them forever transformed. A monumental debut effort from first-time feature director Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's Twelve, Traffic, Erin Brockovich), this comic original includes riveting performances from Peter Gallagher (American Beauty), Andie MacDowell (Michael) and Laura San Giacomo (TV's "Just Shoot Me").
Product details
- Aspect Ratio : 1.85:1
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : R (Restricted)
- Product Dimensions : 7.5 x 5.38 x 0.6 inches; 2.72 ounces
- Director : Steven Soderbergh
- Media Format : DVD, Anamorphic, Dolby, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen
- Run time : 1 hour and 40 minutes
- Release date : October 6, 1998
- Actors : James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Peter Gallagher, Laura San Giacomo
- Dubbed: : French, Spanish
- Subtitles: : English, French, Spanish
- Producers : John Hardy, Robert F. Newmyer
- Language : English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), Unqualified, English (Dolby Digital 4.0), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
- Studio : Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
- ASIN : 0767812158
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #35,180 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #5,821 in Drama DVDs
- Customer Reviews:
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It's a moody movie, set in the South, where emotion and dialogue carry me (and probably you) to the end. It's so good that, for me, it has become "peanut butter fiction," as if it's always been a part of my life. When there's nothing else to watch, I'll put it in. And I'll wonder why I waited so long to watch Sex, Lies, and Videotape again.
I've spent some time trying to identify the protagonist of this film. As with many great films, our hero is not clear. We have Ann (played by Andie MacDowell), the popular southern girl who, about a year ago, married a promising lawyer, John (Peter Gallagher), recently made junior partner of his firm. John is secretly sleeping with Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), Ann's sister. This situation would have gone on indefinitely, were it not for the arrival of Graham (James Spader). Graham is John's old buddy who is moving back to town and, with John's permission, will be staying at John and Ann's upscale home. Although logically Graham should turn out to be just like John--a deceitful man--we quickly discover that the opposite is True. "True" with a capital T.
Graham has changed since the old days. He's artsy, mysterious, immediately strange and likeable, and Truthful. John doesn't know what to make of him. The dialogue in this movie is perfectly revealing, for instance, when Graham explains how he insists on having a car. John finds a need for a car humorous: "In case you have to leave someplace in a hurry." Graham counteracts this observation by adding, "Yeah, or go someplace in a hurry." The first response indicates guilt, the second determination. Graham has come back to town for a reason.
John sends Ann apartment hunting with Graham, which provides John the perfect opportunity to have sex with Cynthia in the marital house while they are away. Unbeknownst to him, Ann and Graham share a connection. So we have either Ann or Graham as our "hero." Ann subconsciously suspects infidelity, and Graham has come to town to show "someone" that he has changed--and we the audience come to realize that he is specifically NOT being John, although years ago he and John were probably exactly alike. Graham is specifically not a liar. He is also impotent.
Sorry if you feel I'm forcing "spoilers" upon your eyes. I could give a treatment of this entire movie and still make it worth watching. So far, the only thing I've left out of Sex, Lies, and Videotape is the videotape. Graham may not be able to have sex with another person, but he can "get off." He makes videotapes. He videotapes women talking about sex, and if you were to ask him if this is how he achieves sexual satisfaction, he'd say matter-of-factly Yes. He sits in the living room of the apartment that Ann helped him find watching women talk about their sexual experiences.
Perhaps this movie would have fizzled at this point, with Graham out of the marital home, but for the sexually oriented Cynthia who hears about Graham and his strange habits. Once Cynthia visits Graham in his personal space, the conflict of the movie becomes intereseting. This is a movie with few, if any, visual effects. O Trust me when I say you don't need them. The story is enough.
How will John react to Cynthia visiting his ex-best friend? How will John react to Ann, who is slowly becoming wise? How will John react to the fact that Graham is the center of attention? Until Graham's arrival, John lived in a perfect world.
If you press me, I'll say the protagonist of this story is Ann, because the outcome of events MOST affects her, and she is likeable. At first I thought the protagonist was Graham. There is a part of me that considers that John is the most affected by the plotline, because his perfect situation is in danger of falling like sand out of the palms of his grubby hands. In any work of fiction, he whom is MOST changed by story events is our hero. You'll have to decide that for yourself.
I consider Sex, Lies, and Videotape to be "peanut butter" cinema. It's so good that you accept it as such; it's a staple of your refrigerator--er--your DVD shelf. It will wait to be seen, yearly, like Bob Clark's A Christmas Story. You can't watch it daily, but you'll want to. You can put it in your DVD player and do other things, occasionally tuning in for great dialogue and masterful plotting. But that's only after you've watched it too many times. The first time, you'll wonder why there aren't more movies like this. You'll wish you were a screenwriter. You might even sit down at a blank First Draft document. You might wonder why you can't make the words come, and when they do come, you wonder why you're such a plagiarist. Why didn't you write Sex, Lies, and Videotape first?
sex, lies was the first independent film to equal or surpass the production values of Hollywood movies. The cinematography (Soderbergh was the film editor), the stereo sound, are spectacular.
The film includes many riches and rewards. To mention a few:
One thing I've always noticed is that John and Cynthia have similar features. They both have black hair, thick eyebrows, wide-set eyes, and a faintly reptilian appearance. Whether this was a conscious casting decision by Soderbergh one can only speculate. Perhaps not, since the film was made on such a low budget.
Soderbergh sometimes joins two scenes by a word or a phrase. "'Can I ask you something personal?", asked by Ann in the restaurant, is repeated by Cynthia to John. Later, when Ann says to John ";You never used to say f...,"; this is the first word of John's speech to Cynthia in the following scene.
Another thing I've always noticed and admired is that Soderberg's camera is always moving just a bit to the left or to the right. The scenes are never static. This personal quirk adds style and depth to our viewing experience.
Some of the dialogue between Ann and Graham toward the end doesn't make much sense to me (except when she tells him "Your problems are not yours only. You've had an effect on my life. I'm divorcing my husband, and maybe I would have anyway, but I'm doing it sooner because of you."), and I have a problem with Graham ending up with a neurotic suburban conformist like Ann. But the fact that sisterhood triumphs over Cynthia's infidelity with Ann's husband is a fine irony.
Unlike Tom Buchanan in THE GREAT GATSBY, who ends up with Daisy and his money while Gatsby dies, John Mullaney loses both his women and his job. Clearly Soderbergh was preparing for this throughout the movie.
A masterpiece by a 26-year-old filmmaker, to be compared to REPULSION by a 28-year old Roman Polanski. In my opinion Soderbergh never matched this level of inspiration in his later films. Neither did Andie McDowell nor Laura San Giacomo. A once-in-a-lifetime confluence.
One more point: sex lies is the closest thing to Vermeer you'll ever see in a movie. The delicacy of the color and detail, the elegance of the imagery, are pure Vermeer. And there are two overt references to Vermeer: Cynthia's black hat which recalls the hats the soldiers wear in Vermeer's paintings, and the map on the wall of Graham's apartment.
Top reviews from other countries
John, le mari : un avocat bien en place, imbue de sa personne, haïssable dés le premier plan, qui trompe sa femme sans vergogne avec sa belle-soeur, Cynthia.
Ann, la femme : pudibonde, elle n'aime pas le sexe et refuse d'en parler, même à son psychologue. Elle voue une confiance aveugle à son mari.
Cynthia, la soeur d'Ann : nymphomane, elle trompe sa soeur sans aucun remord. Elle a un besoin presque névrotique de coucher avec tous les hommes qui approchent de prés ou de loin sa soeur.
Graham, l'ami : Torturé par une histoire vieille de neuf ans, il revient comme pour un pélerinage. Comme John, il a changé et leur amitié a fondu comme neige au soleil. Il comprend trés vite ce qui se passe autour de lui mais ne souffle mot. Il devient le bref confident d'Ann, qui s'offusque et prend la fuite quand elle découvre sa collection de cassettes vidéos qu'il regarde avec une certaine perversité.
Tout ce petit monde va se méler dans un tourbillon où la vérité sortira ainsi qu'une magnifique histoire d'amour, tout en nuance, où rien n'est montré, juste suggéré. Les sentiments exacerbés de chaque personnage, ménera chacun, soit à sa perte, soit à la vie...
J'aime beaucoup James Spader, acteur peu bankable, qu'on voit donc rarement, dans ce film il m'a bluffée. Superbe !!!
パッケージをリニューアルしたとのことですが、ひょっとしてそれだけ?
日本では他に2パターンのジャケットがありますが、確かにこれが一番クール。
ただなぜ会社がこういう売り方をしたのかは不明です。
内容はまあ触れませんが、素晴らしい作品ですよ。
好きな映画10位以内には常にランクインしています。
参考にならないって?
Et pourtant, malgré cet apparent dépouillement de la réalisation, la film a captivé mon attention, uniquement par le jeu des acteurs et surtout par les dialogues. Il est difficile d'écrire de bons dialogues, et il est souvent impossible d'expliciter pour quelles raisons certains dialogues entraînent le spectateur dans le film, et d'autres non. Ici, le jeu des questions / réponses entre les personnages est particulièrement efficace.
Il est intéressant de constater que le film a reçu la Palme d'Or au festival de Cannes. Le jury semble avoir voulu récompenser un style de cinéma qui ne repose pas seulement sur les décors grandioses et les reconstitutions impressionnantes.
Quant à la manière d'aborder la sexualité, elle est novatrice car réaliste, sans pudeur, mais sans pour autant tomber dans le vulgaire.