Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 88: Sun Mar 29

sex, lies and videotape (Soderbergh, 1989): ICA Cinema, 8.15pm

This screening is showing from a 35mm print.

ICA introduction: A Palme d’Or winner and indie classic, sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989) examines intimacy, deception and performance within contemporary relationships. The film centres on confession and voyeurism, revealing how desire is mediated through speech, surveillance and withholding. Reworking the logic of the ‘bed trick’ for a modern context, sex, lies, and videotape replaces physical disguise with emotional concealment. Characters seek intimacy through misdirection and revelation, turning acts of confession into forms of erotic performance. In doing so, the film unsettles distinctions between truth and fabrication, consent and manipulation, exposing desire as something staged, deferred and negotiated.

This screening forms part of a wider film programme exploring the 'bed trick' – one of the oldest narrative devices in myth, literature and cinema – in which characters go to bed with one person and wake up with another. Across three films and a book launch, the programme examines how cinema uses disguise, secrecy and revelation to probe desire, fantasy and the entanglement of sex and lies.

Time Out review:
Ann (Andie MacDowell) is not happy: her husband John (Peter Gallagher) is a lawyer who, unbeknownst to her, is having an affair with her virtually estranged sister (San Giacomo). The deception only comes to light with the arrival of John's old friend Graham (James Spader), a shy, impotent eccentric who gets his kicks from watching interviews he has taped with women about their sexual experiences... Steven Soderbergh's first feature is impressively mature, less concerned with actions per se than with the gulf between deed and motivation, between what we feel and what we say we feel. Despite the title, there is almost no explicit nudity or sexual activity; by avoiding sensationalism, Soderbergh leaves himself free to focus unblinkingly on moral and psychological complexities. No character is entirely without dishonesty or hang-ups; all initially shrink from taking full responsibility for their actions. The actors are superb; working from Soderbergh's funny, perceptive, immaculately wrought dialogue, they ensure that the film stimulates both intellectually and emotionally.
Geoff Andrew 

Here (and above) is the trailer.