FULL FRONTAL (Steven Soderbergh, 2002) R

Reviewed: August 16th, 2002

I need to see Full Frontal at least twice more in order for my opinions about the film to crystallize. In the meantime I'll jot down my initial thoughts. I've read all the insults already, critics talking about how Full Frontal is pretentious and too "inside" and vapid. How Soderbergh seems to be self-consciously trying to torpedo his career after a string of so many successes. Ignore this bullshit cynicism.

Full Frontal is a complex, albeit flawed, hilarious, audaciously challenging yet fun assault on the movie-watching we've become accustomed to. Full Frontal contains some of the most realistically and perfectly realized characters of the year, is packed with a bevy of wonderful performances and contains nary a false note of dialogue (perhaps because a lot of the film was improvised?). Nicky Katt's spontaneous performance is comedic genius; Full Frontal's entire Hitler subplot is uproarious. No film I've seen this summer has stuck with me like Full Frontal has, teasing me, pleasuring me, frustrating me, daring me to turn it round and round in my brain and decipher its nuances.

Unfortunately though, after preliminary deciphering attempts (again, I do need to see Full Frontal again though), I realize perhaps there are no extra nuances present after all. Perhaps the film is exactly what it seems to be -- a seriocomic gaze at some loosely-related-to-show-business people -- and there's no buried treasures under the sand. Regardless, credit must be handed to Full Frontal for even making me wanna think about it, which is more than I can say re: 99.99% of the movies I see.

Plus, just cause Full Frontal is not immediately revealing deeper facets, doesn't mean it's an empty film (and nor does it mean it's a profound one of course). To address the naysayers: Yeah, Full Frontal is not easily digestible viewing and yeah it's far from a perfect film. It's often extremely confusing, the story strands only relate in the vaguest and most tangential of ways and it helps to be a movie buff to appreciate its insider jokes (though it's not a necessity; these jokes ultimately make up only a small portion of the film's humor). Some of the voice-overs grow obnoxious, play trite and feel increasingly unnecessary. Julia Roberts's and Blair Underwood's characters (not their movie within-a-movie characters which are clearly a deliberate parody of Hollywood cheesiness, I'm referring to their "real life," Full Frontal characters), are weak and underdeveloped.

But for all of Full Frontal's problems, there's an equal amount of greatness. Catherine Keener finally turns in a performance I responded to (she still gets to be her standard fucked-up ice queen for most of the film, but when she finally breaks down she moved me). David Hyde Pierce and Mary McCormack -- criminally underused actors in cinema -- are textured and top-shelf. They each play people I feel I've known and their interrelationships are keenly drawn.

I'm not sure what exactly Full Frontal is "about" (again, perhaps nothing in particular) and I didn't take away any all-encompassing message from it about illusion vs. reality or anything else Soderbergh might (emphasis on might) have intended. But you know what? That's fine. I've become sick of films like Signs or 13 Conversations About One Thing, films which try and make some grandiose statement about humanity but only end up offering unconvincing examples to prove their points. If you're gonna bite off more than you can chew... don't bother. Movies can successfully and simply be about the quieter moments, the brief asides... a woman's smile, a stranger's kindness. Full Frontal afforded me an intimate glimpse inside a few characters brains who I came to care for. That's often all I require when I go to the movies. The same critics (i.e. Ebert) who are flipping for the abysmal Lovely and Amazing are accusing Full Frontal of not being about anything. You know what? Lovely and Amazing isn't fucking about anything either besides it's contemptible characters! Oh, but I guess because Mr. Best Director Oscar Winner Steven Soderbergh makes a low-budget, arthouse film, suddenly it has to help cure world hunger? Get real, critics. The double standards people judge films by is outrageous.

I loved Soderbergh's decision to mutate his self-shot DV images into a super-grainy, stylized, makeshift 8mm (via lots of post production tweaking). Full Frontal looks nothing like video, it looks like a guerrilla filmmaker went around with an 8mm camera in the early 1980s, and using only available light, shot an agile, brisk, richly acted little dirt-fest. Sure it's not as gorgeous as 35mm, but there's a eerie beauty to the images nonetheless. Particularly my mind keeps hitting on the sex scene that's shot so surreally, it looks like mingling phantoms (it also kinda reminded me of a low-fi version of Brad Pitt/Helena Bonham Carter's FX-enhanced copulation in Fight Club).

(Random penultimate side note: Did anyone else think the music that plays over the film-within-a-film was identical to the great score of last year's Ghost World?)

I hope Soderbergh keeps pushing himself, daring himself (and us), experimenting, moving around. Let him never be content, because it's his restless spirit that makes him one of the best filmmakers and most exciting artists we have. Soderbergh might make an Erin Brockovich for every Traffic and an Ocean's Eleven for every The Limey, but I wouldn't want it any other way. His box office hits give him the clout to get his Full Frontals financed, marketed and recognized. He's the only guy who can swing freely from adventurous free-for-all to pure commercialized product, and I fucking love him for that.

A thousand tidy and easy Tadpoles -- yet another film which most critics are moronically falling head over heels for right now -- is not worth one half a Full Frontal.

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