Sex, Lies, and Videotape

Another of the movies I got the chance to record thanks to the free preview of the Showtime Channels is newer by the standards of what I generally post about here, but is still 32 years old: Sex, Lies, and Videotape. I see that it's going to be on again overnight tonight at 12:20 AM on The Movie Channel, or three hours later if you only have the west coast feed.

Ann Bishop Mullany (Andie MacDowell) is a housewife in a medium-sized city living with upwardly-mobile husband John (Peter Gallagher), a lawyer trying to make partner. Ann is bored to the point that she's been seeing a therapist, telling him vapid stories about the things she worries about and whatnot. Little does she know her life is about to get a whole lot more interesting.

Graham Dalton (James Spader) is an old college friend of John's, and he's coming to town hoping to get a new job. John has agreed to let Graham stay on the couch for the couple of days necessary before Graham can get an apartment of his own. But one wonders how much they were actually friends, as their relationship doesn't see to be all that strong now, as we see over dinner.

The next day, since Ann doesn't have anything to do, she takes Graham apartment-hunting, and after he finds an apartment he likes they go out to lunch together, where the talk turns to sex, which seems rather frank for two people who have only met 24 hours earlier. Graham reveals that he's impotent and can't have sex with anybody as a result. Someone who can have enjoyable sex is John. But he's having the more enjoyable sex with Cynthia Bishop (Laura San Giacomo). If you paid attention to the names, you'll realize this means that John is not only having an affair -- he's having it with Ann's sister!

Cynthia learns about the presence of Graham, and would be curious to meet him, but Graham is a bit of a professed weirdo in that he doesn't want to be tied down with a phone and doesn't even necessarily want Ann giving her sister his address without him first knowing about it. So Ann goes to see Graham to talk to him about it, which is where she learns about Graham's dark secret.

Graham finds women and interviews them, recording the interviews. That in and of itself is no big deal. But the interviews are about sex, and they're rather intimate and lengthy interviews. Now, if Graham were an academic like Efrem Zimbalist in The Chapman Report, this again wouldn't be such a big deal. But he's just a regular schlub with a perversion that would horrify most people, especially if they learn that Graham uses these interviews to try to get himself turned on.

One person who doesn't seem so fazed by it is Cynthia. She goes to see Graham and, learning about the tapes, agrees to talk about her own sex life, something with is going to make the already complicated sibling relationship between Cynthia and Ann even more complicated should Ann find out. Well, then again, there's also that affair between John and Cynthia. As you can probably guess, all these secrets are going to come to light as we get to the climax (no pun intended) of the movie.

I have to admit that it took me a while to get into Sex, Lies, and Videotape, because the characters are not particularly redeeming. But as the movie goes on, the story and the acting is just so good that for me it overcame any of the difficulties I had with the characters. Having said that, it's also obvious that this isn't going to be the sort of movie for everybody, and certainly not for families.