Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8474 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-10-07
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 100 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Winner of the Palm d'Or and Best Actor awards at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, sex, lies, and videotape transformed the independent film industry and turned writer-director Steven Soderbergh into the envy of aspiring filmmakers everywhere. Sly, seductive, and coolly intelligent, the movie explores the sexual shenanigans and personal preoccupations of its four central characters, revolving around a selfish lawyer (Peter Gallagher) who responds to his wife by having an affair with her free-spirited sister (Laura San Giacomo). But when the lawyer's college roommate (James Spader) arrives for an unexpectedly extended visit, the neglected wife (Andie MacDowell) is surprisingly responsive to his seductive hobby of videotaping women as they describe their sexual fantasies. It's his way of compensating for impotence, but the curious wife considers this a sexual challenge, and Soderbergh turns sex, lies, and videotape into a fascinating chamber piece that puts a decidedly different spin on the consequences of infidelity. Balanced on a risky and finely tuned performance by Spader, the film delivers frisky passion and emotional intrigue, and yet much of its allure is found in the exchange of secrets and the hidden mysteries of sexual desire. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Great Movie!
This is definitely a classic movie. It is wonderful and introduced Steven Sodenburgh, Neil LaBute, James Spader and Andie MacDowell to the world. The story is involves a troubled married couple, a sister who is sleeping with her sister's husband, and a strange man who enters the picture. The man had trouble in love in high school and never got over it. He has grown into a man who masturbates to video interviews with women about sex. He can't have sex with another person. This strange man, played by James Spader, provides a catalyst for all these lives to change.

I enjoyed it while I was watching it but...
The lives of John (Peter Gallagher) and Ann (Andie MacDowell), a young married couple, and Ann's sister, Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), are forever changed when John's school friend, Graham (James Spader), an impotent man who gets off by video taping women talking about sex, comes to visit.

I really enjoyed watching "Sex, Lies and Videotape" while I was watching it. I sat down with the intention of only watching the first half hour and ended up watching it all in one sitting because I just couldn't bring myself to press stop. I really wanted to know what would happen next, particularly as the film neared its end, and I really enjoyed watching all of the actors involved, who are all excellent, but especially James Spader, who is wonderfully creepy, and Andie MacDowell (whom I usually dislike intensely), as the "nice" sister. However, although all of the individual scenes within the film were brilliant, when I got to the end, I just felt that the whole film was rather pointless and I ended up walking away feeling disappointed. For me, the ending just wasn't strong enough to live up to the promise of the earlier scenes. The revelations weren't big enough, and the ending wasn't final enough.

I am glad that I saw this film, as I have wondered about it for as long as I can remember, and I would probably watch it again, just to see James Spader, but I don't think it's as great a film as other critics would have you believe.

Great movie, bad director's commentary
I saw this again after many years and it struck me again how powerful it is: an amazing movie, particularly considering that it was the debut of 26-year-old writer/director Steven Soderbergh. The cast is fantastic. I'd forgotten Laura San Giacomo is actually a very good actress, and James Spader is simply brilliant as the outsider who brings his sex videos into a rather dysfunctional family -- and changes the group's lives.

The only disappointing aspect of the DVD is not the movie itself, but the director's commentary. I'm sure Soderbergh had fun chatting with Neil LaBute, but they often talk about everything but the movie, and it can be quite frustrating.