In August 1989, Steven Soderbergh made his directorial debut with Sex, Lies, and Videotape. It was a watershed moment for both the director and the studio, Miramax. In the ’90s, Miramax and Soderbergh achieved even greater success in independent cinema. But their first collaboration is striking because it largely came out of nowhere.
Sex, Lies, and Videotape premiered at the Cannes Film Festival months earlier, and won the coveted Palme d’Or award. That certainly helped get the word out about the film to critics. But this was more than just some art house flick. Sex, Lies, and Videotape did very well at the mainstream box office for such a low-budget film, which makes it all the more surprising that the movie is difficult to find now. Sex, Lies, and Videotape isn’t readily available to stream or rent online, although it can be purchased.
Regardless, the 35th anniversary of Sex, Lies, and Videotape is the perfect opportunity to reflect on this film as we examine whether it has withstood the test of time.
The film was Steven Soderbergh’s first triumph
Soderbergh is ranked highly among Hollywood directors as one of the auteurs of the industry. But in 1989, he was just a young man who wrote and directed his first movie on a relatively sparse $1.2 million budget. That’s still more money than most amateur filmmakers could put together today. But the thing that separates Soderbergh from the pack isn’t the money he had. It was how he used it.
The director was well-aware of the cultural norms of the ’80s, and he managed to flaunt them without making a graphically adult movie. There’s more sex talk than actual sex, and the videotapes don’t lead to the salacious places that the title suggests. Instead, he delivered an intimate portrait of a marriage going down the tubes and the sexual desires and confessions of the people around them. It may have shocked audiences, but it also brought in the crowds. The film made $36.7 million worldwide and launched Soderbergh’s career.
James Spader gives a career-defining performance
For most of the past two decades, James Spader has reinvented himself as a television actor, first as the smarmy lawyer Alan Shore on The Practice and Boston Legal, and as the criminal mastermind Raymond Reddington in The Blacklist. But Spader first made a real name for himself in Sex, Lies, and Videotape as Graham Dalton, a seemingly normal guy with a kind of weird kink.
Since Graham is impotent, he finds that the only way he can feel anything sexually is by watching women confess their fantasies for him on his extensive videotape collection. It weirds out Graham’s friends, but the videotapes also draw them into the events that will transform their lives… and not necessarily for the better.
The rest of the cast shines as well
Sex, Lies, and Videotape largely keeps the focus on four characters: Graham, his friend John Mullany (Peter Gallagher), John’s wife, Ann Bishop Mullany (Andie MacDowell), and Ann’s sister, Cynthia Patrice Bishop (Laura San Giacomo). Spader gets the majority of the attention, but the women really shine as well. MacDowell was a rom-com queen in the ’90s, but she gets to have a dramatic turn as a woman who has no sexual attraction for her husband. Their marriage is falling apart, and it doesn’t help that John is sleeping with Cynthia on the side.
The film opens with Ann in therapy, but her real breakthrough doesn’t come until later in the film when she consents to tape one of Graham’s sexual confessions for his collection. That gives her the motivation to make changes in her life. Despite having an affair with her sister’s husband, Cynthia remains a very likable character thanks to San Giacomo’s performance. She’s far from perfect, but all of the characters in this movie live in metaphorical glass houses.
Gallagher doesn’t get to have the flashy moments that most of his co-stars enjoy. But late in the film, John gives his confession in his own way, and it comes down like an atom bomb on Graham. That’s one of the biggest moments in the film, and it was all on Gallagher to pull it off.
The premise is far less shocking in 2024
Keep in mind that the culture of 2024 is not the same as it was in 1989. Back then, the premise of Sex, Lies, and Videotape was more shocking… and even offensive to some. Sex scenes weren’t uncommon in film, but discussions about sex, impotence, and voyeurism were not exactly mainstream. But in the age of social media, TikTok, and YouTube, there’s very little that people aren’t willing to share anymore.
So in that regard, the frank sexual talk in the film seems antiquated. The videotapes themselves are even more so, as consumers have since shifted to digital over physical media. These days, the thing that would make Graham seem weird is his VHS collection, and not necessarily what was on it.
The reason why Sex, Lies, and Videotape is still relevant 35 years later isn’t just the premise, the actors, or even the director. It’s the intimacy and the dialogue-driven story. We see these characters as the imperfect people that they are, each of whom has a secret that harms someone close to them. By the end of the movie, all of the relationships have been changed or shattered. And yet it’s not a completely bleak conclusion, as the film offers hope for two characters to reconcile and teases a potential emotional connection between another pair. That gives the journey a satisfying note to go out on.
Buy Sex, Lies, and Videotape on Prime Video.