Lucky Rooney Mara. First she gets to star in a David Fincher film (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). Then, as if she’s searched far and wide for an equivalent film stylist, she finds herself working with Steven Soderbergh. Soderbegh’s love of his craft knows few boundaries. He regularly shoots and edits his works himself under clever familial pseudonyms (copping his dad’s names Peter Andrews as cinematographer and his mother’s maiden name, Mary Ann Bernard, as editor). His films exude craftsmanship even when they’re occasionally not very good (last year’s Haywire) or fall just short (2011’s Contagion). When he’s at the top of his game (Traffic, Out Of Sight, The Girlfriend Experience), his savvy with the camera and intuitive editing know few peers.
What a pity if, as he claims, he’s really retiring (at 50!), but Steven Soderbergh, after a winsome Magic Mike, has achieved an entertaining and thoughtful mindblower in Side Effects. To be sure, it’s one of those films (like 2011’s excellent Double Hour) where the less you know going into it, the better your viewing experience will be. Thus, I will reveal only minimal plot details. Let’s just say it touches on the pharmaceutical industry’s antidepressant drugs and their possible nasty side effects, and the treatments and talk therapies of Mara’s current and former psychiatrists (an excellent Jude Law, and Catherine Zeta-Jones). Then it sneakily evolves into a Hitchockian crime thriller. Yeah, I know. The term Hitchcockian often gets bandied about with careless abandon, but not here. The twists and turns in Side Effects are fun to behold. All the while Soderbergh’s direction maintains a quirky detachment. His cleverness seems innocent, as if he’s as surprised as the viewer at screenwriter Scott Z. Burns’ red herrings and detours.
Mara, thoroughly owning her character, plays a wounded bird of a woman whose fragility is palpable. Her depression seems an insurmountable problem when she meets Law, who treats her instead of commits her after she survives driving her car into a wall. That’s just the beginning of a wild ride into deception, revenge, and not a little satire regarding a fictitious miracle drug, Ablixa. Better living through chemistry meets $50,000 psychiatrist honorariums.
If these elements seem an unlikely stew, you’re getting warm. Highly original, Side Effects never loses its footing. Law deftly portrays a man who is, initially, always in control of himself. His responses when he believes he’s caught in a sting and begins to unravel are one of the highlights of the film. Has the shrink lost his mind? His compelling performance draws us into a labyrinth that doesn’t let up until the final scene–one which, side by side with its natural catharsis, felt a little bittersweet if this is really Soderbergh’s last theatrical feature. Why don’t we ever hear of the countless mediocre directors out there hanging up their cameras? Oh well, he says he’s likely to still direct in other mediums, possibly television, where his upcoming biopic of Liberace will air on HBO. Hollywood film studios all turned down the project. From a four-hour long bio of Che Guevara to Liberace, Soderbergh often goes where no one else dares. In Side Effects, he goes where many have gone. He just does it better.
4 There’s Something Happening here But You Don’t Know What It Is–Do you Mr Jones? (out of 5)