Last year, one of my most rewatched films was Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), a film revolving around four people whose lives become entangled due to their various sexual neuroses. It's a film very interested in infidelity and what it takes to make relationships work. In general, I find the misery of heterosexuality, as portrayed in many a film, tedious. So, I avoided this film specifically because I assumed that it would be another film people enjoyed because it had straight people screaming at each other in it. Sex, Lies and Videotape invited me in through its depiction of loneliness and perversion, both of which are aspects of being alive that are often mocked and derided. The serial killer is lonely and perverted. The stalker is lonely and perverted. Your average middle class married couple are not typically lonely and perverted, not unless the film ends with some kind of violent climax (I'm looking at you, American Beauty !). The film follows An
It's very romantic to view the creative process as an inherently transgressive one, and making movies should be, as it's one of the most collaborative modes of making art. However, filmmakers are at the mercy of production companies funding their projects, who in turn inform the market and decide what will sell. People who have no connections within the industry, aren't rich and aren't willing to comply with a company trying to churn out another forgettable money-making sequel/revamp/remake, don't seem to have much of a chance at all. Nostalgia has been a burden on culture, and maybe it always has been, but particularly recently, we cannot escape it. I'll admit myself it's really hard to not look back at the past and think 'it seemed so much easier to get an interesting and unique film made back then'. The 90s in particular seemed plentiful, with some of my favourite directors like Gregg Araki, Cheryl Dunye and Ngozi Onwurah making formally interesti