In Steven Soderbergh’s debut feature, James Spader’s camcorder-wielding character thinks he’s becoming intimate with the women in his life just because he films them talking about sex. But filmmaking and technology are actually distancing him from women, serving as barriers and excuses that keep him from risking real physical and emotional intimacy. That skepticism about moving pictures as a medium for self-expression and connecting with others has marked Soderbergh’s entire directing career (which, fittingly, comes to an end at Cannes with the screening at this year’s fest of what Soderbergh says will be his last film, the HBO movie Behind the Candelabra.)
And yet, Soderbergh has long been beloved by film critics and other filmmakers. Never more so than at Cannes, where his low-budget debut won the Palme d’Or in 1989. The film didn’t just launch Soderbergh’s career. It also launched the American indie-film wave of the 1990s, led by distributor Miramax (the rights-holder to Sex, Lies and Videotape) and its co-chairman, impresario Harvey Weinstein. And it launched a wave of American dominance at Cannes that continued with such Palme d’Or winners as 1990’s Wild at Heart and 1991’s Barton Fink, and which ended with 1994 winner Pulp Fiction.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPzSB5JXhn0]