Sex, Lies and Videotapes

Eduardo Herrera

Film History II

March 18, 2014

Professor Oakes

Sex, Lies And Videotape

            Sex, Lies and Videotape is an independent drama film by director Steven Soderbergh.  This movie plays on the roles of perversion in James Spader character, Graham. Graham is brought to the home of John Mullany, who is a friend from a university. Mullany’s wife, Ann, helps Graham find a home in the new city. Meanwhile John is having an affair with Ann’s sister Cynthia.  Graham has a sexual perversion where he is uncomfortable having sexual relationships with women, but he is more comfortable in filming women talk about their sexual experiences and later pleasure himself to those tapes. This because a problem because Graham videotaped Cynthia, and in this video she told graham that she was having an affair with her sister’s husband. Once Ann found out, she wanted to do a videotape and later it is implied that Ann had a sexual relationship with Graham. Once John found out, He bursted in rage about being caught and his wife accusing him of cheating, and took his anger out on Graham. This movie plays on the horrors of intimacy; Here is a woman who has a good life, but a bad husband who is cheating on her. Sex, Lies and Videotape raised the stakes for an independent film and what it was meant to be. Before this time independent films were not getting much viewing, and were shunned out of the limelight, this film put the independent industry in the limelight.  This film inspired many independent movements such as the likes of “500 Days of summer and Little Miss Sunshine.” Sex, Lies and Videotapes is a movie about a loveless relationship where sex is the main reason for the lack of love. In this movie, Friendship is lost, Lack of trust in family is created, and new love is formed between two people who lost love, and found it in each other.