"Men learn to love the person they're attracted to, and women become more and more attracted to the person that they love," Graham Dalton (James Spader) says. He's heard the quote somewhere in the past, but he can't quite recall its origin. Was it from a misty romantic comedy? A philosophical book? Who cares: the characters in "sex, lies, and videotape" have certainly not been lucky enough in life to make that romantic sounding sentiment a reality, spending the next 99 minutes exploring differing levels of sexual dissatisfaction.

Most famous for starting the independent film movement back in 1989, sex, lies, and videotape is possibly one of those movies that thrives on its buzz but, as a standalone film, is underwhelming. Perhaps I am expecting too much. Should I not? The release poster flaunts an imposing amount of enticing quotes from glowing critical reviews, calling it things like "an edgy, intense comedy!" or "the season's smartest and funniest film!" Considering every headline ends in an exclamation point and uses labels like "comedy" and "funniest" for description, I guess I anticipated a callously absurd dialogue driven film, a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for the next generation.

sex, lies, and videotape turned out to be none of the things I thought it would be. To be fair, I should not be letting my expectations get in the way of my critique, but like the release of a new Prince album, there is an unavoidable hope that something game changing will be at store. But sometimes, hope isn't as strong as you'd like it to be, and the film, dare I say it, is overrated. It's intrigued with dialogue and likes to play with it, not quite unsentimental and not quite stilted. The film has the talky honesty of an Off-Broadway play that quakes in the escalating importance of conversation — but it doesn't tremble in the same way Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? did, which had such boiling dialogue that the characters became more interesting than any sort of story.

sex, lies, and videotape analyzes the sex lives of four characters: John (Peter Gallagher), his wife Ann (Andie MacDowell), her sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), and John's old college friend, Graham. John is a fruitful yuppie who disrespects his marriage by sleeping with the abrasive Cynthia, who is irritated by her sister's lifelong, despicable goody-two-shoes personality. Ann takes comfort in the financially stable confines of her union; she has lost interest in sex, believing it to be unimportant in comparison to other types of human interaction. Graham, coming into town nine years after his last encounter with John, is impotent, receiving his erotic kicks by recording women talk about sex in front of a low-budgeted camera. By the end of the film, Cynthia and Ann will have partaken in Graham's eccentric means of arousal, changing their lives for the better.

Writing reviews for films like sex, lies, and videotape are the hardest kinds of reviews to write; the dialogue is good, the direction is good, the acting is good, the editing is good, etc., etc., etc., the only flaw lying in the fact that I plain and simply did not connect with the film emotionally. Many laud it for the same reasons that I didn't much enjoy it; the slice-of-life earnestness felt anticlimactic to me, while others appreciated its realism. I never felt like I knew Ann and Graham well enough to sympathize with their paralleling frigidity; their personal hardships didn't leave me feeling, well, anything.

But if I didn't savor sex, lies, and videotape as much as I would have liked to, there is still plenty of things it does well. Soderbergh's handling of the direction and screenplay is methodical and gradual, hugely mature for a filmmaker who was only 26 at the time. The voyeuristic attitude of the film is uncomfortable but perfectly watchable, the sexual issues between the characters contrasting with complementary dysfunction; the acting is similarly balanced, the actors all subtle but well-cast.

sex, lies, and videotape makes for a number of firsts. It was Steven Soderbergh's first feature in a versatile and impressive career. It was the first time the actors had been able to strut their acting abilities with such unbridled intensity. It was the film that made the independent film industry a force to be reckoned with. I didn't love it, but you might.

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