John considered his life quite prosperous. He was in good standing with his law firm, had a beautiful wife, Ann, and a mistress, Cynthia, who was Ann’s little sister. This idyll was shattered by the arrival of his university friend Graham, who seemed a little strange to Ann and John.

Once at the bar with Ann, Graham confessed to her that he was currently impotent. Upon visiting Graham, Ann discovered he had a series of videotapes, each with a woman’s name on them. Through persistence, Ann learned that each videotape contained a woman’s sexual confession. She also learned that this is how Graham gets sexual gratification.

4k movies reviews
Films that take the delicate subject of sexual problems under the microscope and scrutinize it for an hour and a half from different angles are somewhat embarrassing. Especially if the sexual problems are based on deviations, which in the eyes of a prim and stiff spectator verge on perversions and appear under the microscope in all their ugliness. Once, as a chaste Victorian girl, I also avoided pictures like Sex, Lies and Videos, seeing them as propaganda for free love that denigrated lofty love in my eyes. I regarded those who had unconventional sexual preferences, complexes or difficulties with the healthy expression of sexuality with a fearful disgust and, in my deep conviction, if they could find a kindred personality, then only in the same environment of freaks and perverts from which they themselves came. I found pornography to be an inferior form of development, and films with a strong, even verbal emphasis on sex to be, at the very least, impure. I was such a button puritan until I was 18.

Then the worldview has successfully changed, and at the time of the release of the scandalous “secretary” I thought more freely. Having watched it, “Klut” and “Sex, Lies, Videos” on the same wave, I found all three films stunningly… romantic. Unexpectedly pleasantly romantic, and all those informal displays of sexuality that had previously turned me into a marble sculpture were far more sincere and pure than one could ironically assume. None of these “dirty” films with troubled characters called for debauchery, but rather appealed to the brighter sides of the soul, while the sexually healthy nymphomaniac characters in other pictures indulged in animal passion to the point of injury and sprains. It’s funny.

Besides, there are many more people who are sexually unsatisfied due to incompatibility or mental trauma, as I found out later, than it would seem at first glance (it is not customary to shout about this kind of thing in all corners), and there is nothing terrible, typhoid or mischievous about it, just that they have not yet found what they are looking for. But they do, and sometimes they find it. And talking about it, as Steven Soderbergh says, is just necessary, so that healthy married women who avoid sex or perform marital duties, gritting their teeth in disgust, do not consider the lack of orgasm the norm and do not take the blame, but look for the source of the problems or another life partner. Gone are the days when sexual compatibility was not known or not taken into account – it is no less important in a relationship than understanding, trust, and falling in love. That’s what “Sex, Lies and Videos” is about – love and sexual desire. Not for the first stranger that winked at you in a bar, but for the very person of your own. About how it’s not easy for a woman to combine falling in love with sex and for a man to combine sex with falling in love; about how having sex is no guarantee of feelings and its absence is no reason to stay friends, even if intimacy is scary.

The four characters in “Sex, Lies, and Videos” are divided in pairs into the troubled and the unproblematic. Problematic Ann is a young, charming girl who avoids sex with her husband, who does not turn her on at all. She is well-mannered, modest, and subconsciously does everything she can to be less desirable, such as hiding her good figure under wide, straight dresses, old blouses, and shoes without heels. Her lack of a sex life doesn’t upset her until her husband invites an old college buddy with whom he shares an unbridled youth to visit.

The troubled Graham is an unusual guy; he immediately interests Ann. He has an eccentricity, a zest that sets him apart from the crowd of perpetually hurried, predictable, career-money-sex-obsessed philistines. He’s even willing to live in a car just to have one key. “Not of this world,” Ann characterizes him. In addition, for the past few years Graham has been an impotent man who has lost the ability to enjoy sex with another man because of internal contradictions. Or deliberately “sitting on a diet”…? So he watches the tapes. Interviews with women who trust him with their dirty secrets.

The unproblematic characters are Ann’s husband John and her younger sister Cynthia, who are lovers and copulate like rabbits as soon as the opportunity arises. They are liars and erotomaniacs who have nothing in common outside of bed-no plans, no feelings, no communication. “Hello-bye” = a physical connection that neither of them wants anymore.

Both stories develop in parallel – the budding emotional connection between Graham and Ann in the complete absence of sex, and the disintegration of the existing connection between John and Cynthia in its overabundance. The moral is asking for itself. But before she asks for it, know this – Ann’s little sister has a plan to get to know Graham and his video collection better. Maybe even do an interview. Watch out, Ann, your friend may not be as unusual as you think…

It’s a good movie, I like it a lot. I wouldn’t venture to recommend it to the general public and the older generation, but to uninhibited young people I do. Especially girls, because when you look at young, long-haired James Spader, you really wish he wasn’t impotent.

Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (60.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Subtitles
English, French.