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Like Harry and Sally, the movie is hardworking, spot on; it winepresses its conversation into epigrams. No surprise here. Reiner found wayward comedy in such genres as the rock documentary (This Is Spinal Tap) and the historical romance (The Princess Bride). Crystal, the improv master who is Reiner's closest friend -- "We finish each other's sentences," Crystal says, "and he finishes my lunch" -- meets the challenge of making a compulsive Lothario not just likable but impishly seductive. And Ephron, a helpful Heloise of emotional heartburn, perks the script with clever answers to modern problems. How long should a man hold a woman after making love to her? "Somewhere between 30 seconds and all night." What doubt nags at any woman who lets Mr. Right get away? "You'll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that someone else is married to your husband." What is the guilty secret of married life? "No sex."
No sex? No problem. In sex, lies, and videotape, Soderbergh suggests that abstinence makes the heart grow fonder. Ann (Andie MacDowell) is a Baton Rouge, La., housewife too decorous to go mad. Things with her lawyer husband John (Peter Gallagher) are fine, she tells her therapist, "except I'm havin' this feeling that I don't want him to touch me." They haven't had sex for a while. At least Ann hasn't; John is pursuing an affair with her lubricious sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo). Curiosity is about the only thing that can be aroused in gentle Ann, and when John's chum Graham (James Spader) visits, she and he swap secrets. Hers: "I think that sex is overrated." His: "I'm impotent." They could be a couple for the '90s: the first postsexual lovers.
To describe the plot -- in which we learn that Graham can reach sexual climax only while watching videotapes he has made of women's carnal confessions -- is to make sex, lies sound like a smirking stag reel. But this is not an "adult film" in the X-rated sense; it is an adult film, "patient and subtle," in its creator's apt words. It is about men who use women by watching them, and women tired of being the object of satyric attention. What amazes is that at just 26, Soderbergh displays the three qualities associated with mature filmmakers: a unique authorial voice, a spooky camera assurance, and the easy control of ensemble acting (Andie MacDowell, start polishing your acceptance speech). Soderbergh delivers so much and promises even more.
The directors of both pictures know the risk these days in mining the movie tradition of sophisticated comedy-drama that stretches from Midnight to Manhattan and Broadcast News. Before sex, lies earned raves at the U.S. Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and then won the top prize at Cannes, Soderbergh was apprehensive. "I thought the film would seem too European for an American audience," he says, "and too dialogue heavy to translate in Europe. I figured ten people would go see it four times, and that would be that." Reiner, a man Ephron describes as being "very fond of his depressions," dared to commit some small optimism on his happy set. As Meg Ryan recalls, "Rob said, 'Wouldn't it be amazing to have this kind of experience, make a great movie, and have people come to see it?' "