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Soderbergh interviewed Mara for Interview magazine "in character" and it oscillates between kind of funny and pretty obnoxious on Soderbergh's end. Make sure to keep scrolling down to access all four pages, Interview's web design is weird

Quite amusing! He's very much in the style of his Schizopolis commentary track in which he belligerently interviewed himself here!

I enjoyed this film as a well-made ludicrous thriller, kind of out of its time. Then I dutifully trudged through the extras, which were absolutely boilerplate, shallow and repetitive until I got to the "8mm featurette" directed by Schizopolis's Fletcher Munson (and shot by Catherine Zeta-Jones in what's presumably her first and last DOP assignment). If you have the disc, this extra is worth a look.

Quite out of its time, as the whole thing is a beautifully outré throwback to the erotic thrillers of the early 90s! Some enterprising film scholar really needs to reexamine this original movement as a natural progression from the more outwardly indebted noir throwbacks of the 80s revival in noir interest in modern cinema... I'm surprised I never wrote about this one here, since it's one of my favorite Soderberghs, but it's due for a revisit and I don't remember any of the extras if I ever did watch them

Soderbergh claims this will be his final film.

You’ve missed much in the last four years, time traveler.

Side Effects may be my favourite Soderbergh film. I love how it

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starts out as a pious Oscar bait expose of the evils of the pharmaceutical industry, like a more solemn Erin Brockvich. Half way in, the film gleefully twists itself into the most lurid of Neo-Noirs.

More so than Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, this was the film which convinced me that Rooney Mara is one of the most talented actors of her generation.

Since we've brought this film up again, I'll chime in. I saw this film ultimately more as an allegory for how lazy most people are when it comes to seeking truth; they're more willing to simply settle for the easiest, most convenient explanation that's most readily available, regardless of its actual veracity. Meanwhile, those few who may smell the bullshit are automatically dismissed by the others. It would be great to have more people like Jude Law's character in this world. That angle resonated with me far more than the actual pharmaceutical aspects or the secret plot by who turn out to be the story's two antagonists.

MoonlitKnight wrote:Since we've brought this film up again, I'll chime in. I saw this film ultimately more as an allegory for how lazy most people are when it comes to seeking truth; they're more willing to simply settle for the easiest, most convenient explanation that's most readily available, regardless of its actual veracity. Meanwhile, those few who may smell the bullshit are automatically dismissed by the others. It would be great to have more people like Jude Law's character in this world. That angle resonated with me far more than the actual pharmaceutical aspects or the secret plot by who turn out to be the story's two antagonists.

In that case you managed to salvage from this the finger wagging life lesson I felt this was a subversion of. In the tradition of so many film noir plots, the machinations behind the twist are so unlikely and outrageously convoluted, it’s more like a conspiracy, theory than the more likely explanation the film initially proposes.

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I find it hard to believe that a criminal conspiracy to make pharmaceutical stock drop, cooked up by homicidal lesbians, is meant to stand for any truth in a literal sense.

I don’t see in Law‘s character a hero. He has no choice but to get to the bottom of the conspiracy as his life has been ruined, he’s not acting on the behalf of anybody but himself.

Judging this film on plausibility is almost willfully missing the point

domino harvey wrote:Judging this film on plausibility is almost willfully missing the point

Exactly. That’s what I think is what’s fun about it. It goes down the seemingly predictable route of a message film and then turns around and goes gonzoid. I’ve always been a fan of movies which radically shift genre half way though.

Lost Highway wrote:In that case you managed to salvage from this the finger wagging life lesson I felt this was a parody of. In the tradition of so many film noir plots, the machinations behind the twist are so unlikely and outrageously convoluted, it’s more like a conspiracy, theory than the more likely explanation the film initially proposes.

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I find it hard to believe that a criminal conspiracy to make pharmaceutical stock drop, cooked up by homicidal lesbians, is meant to stand for any truth in a literal sense.

I don’t see in Law‘s character a hero. He has no choice but to get to the bottom of the conspiracy as his life has been ruined, he’s not acting on the behalf of anybody but himself.

Given that it's been a few years since I've seen it, my memory may be a little foggy. I could've sworn Law's character pursued this matter of his own free will (his post-trial line "Don't you wonder what really happened?" has stuck in my mind) --even if it drove his loved ones away from him in the process. Even so, he was ultimately able to uncover what the lawyers and judge were not. Even if such an outrageous premise as revealed in the final act were to occur in real life, does that not count for something?

MoonlitKnight wrote:

Lost Highway wrote:In that case you managed to salvage from this the finger wagging life lesson I felt this was a parody of. In the tradition of so many film noir plots, the machinations behind the twist are so unlikely and outrageously convoluted, it’s more like a conspiracy, theory than the more likely explanation the film initially proposes.

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I find it hard to believe that a criminal conspiracy to make pharmaceutical stock drop, cooked up by homicidal lesbians, is meant to stand for any truth in a literal sense.

I don’t see in Law‘s character a hero. He has no choice but to get to the bottom of the conspiracy as his life has been ruined, he’s not acting on the behalf of anybody but himself.

Given that it's been a few years since I've seen it, my memory may be a little foggy. I could've sworn Law's character pursued this matter of his own free will (his post-trial line "Don't you wonder what really happened?" has stuck in my mind) --even if it drove his loved ones away from him in the process. Even so, he was ultimately able to uncover what the lawyers and judge were not. Even if such an outrageous premise as revealed in the final act were to occur in real life, does that not count for something?

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Once his professional reputation and marriage have been ruined by Emily and Victoria, he plays a trick on Emily which enables him to turn the tables on them. He isn’t some selfless hero bringing down an unjust or dangerous system, he turns a lethal double act of femme fatales against each other, therefore restoring his reputation.

I just find it hard to take this seriously as some All the President’s Men style movie about the virtues of uncovering the truth. In the end the main thing at stake, was Jonathan’s career and marriage.

It’s an exercise in subverting genre expectations and it turns from glum Lifetime movie into a delightfully disreputable Neo Noir.

In addition to all that wonderfully purple plotting, it has a breathtakingly dark and cynical ending in which

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scammed law enforcement, scammed patsy and other aggrieved parties conspire to keep Mara's character incarcerated and drugged to oblivion in perpetuity, even though she got off scot-free in a purely legal sense.

That's about as dark as noir gets.

Part of what makes this misunderstood film successful are the illusions of realism that pump-fake a different, less traditional neo-noir, before combining with style to such lengths that we begin to see the writing on the wall. Law’s competent cultural and suicidal assessments are pretty accurate, and Mara’s performance hints at potential for fleshed out character development. Though we are quickly swept up in the artifice, which should immediately be hinted at with Zeta-Jones’ introduction, if not sooner; and the creative, clean and lean editing that follows hammers in the nail of a genre exercise that will hold onto mystery as a form of collateral for our ticket into Graceland. Thank god Soderbergh kept making movies but there are technical choices here that are nothing short of sensational and show a man at the top of his game, taking a wild B-noir plot and altering our surrogate vantage points several times over to juggle us along with the narrative twists. Soderbergh is being transparently playful, as quickly Law loses traction on behaving like a real psychiatrist and the whole film becomes upended, though purposefully calculated as such with the confident respectful provocations that Soderbergh infuses in his work.

Like Unsane, taking this at face value would reveal so many things wrong it would be comical to count- from ridiculous plot mechanics to subtler ethical violations.

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The joke though is not that big pharma is evil, or that medications don’t work, but that the politics of casting a wide net of liability by listing unlimited side effects allow for a weird loophole to be exposed toward diffusing responsibility. The overprotective nature of these advertisements creates alibis, rather than cures symptoms. The film never was about a commentary, just a hilariously clever plot idea that exploits a silly situation, so it’s both intelligent and irrational. If there's a commentary at all, it’s on reversing the stigma so that those who take medication for mental health reclaim their power by taking advantage of the blanket stigma-generating 'potential symptoms' list that "others" them, to the point of getting a free pass to commit murder! The irony is real.

I agree with zedz reading of the end’s darkness, and what’s even better is that it aligns with a Code punishment but also

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celebrates a tit-for-tat that clouds our protagonist’s ethics, allowing him to will an emotional act that rejects moral high ground and allows him to get his life back at the same time, which isn’t exactly Code-friendly! What's perhaps even sicker is that I feel sympathy for her at the end as she screams while being dragged away and forcibly institutionalized, though maybe this is just my triggered nightmare a la Unsane.

If taken as a noir, there's an eerie suggestion of fatalism here: one that follows suit with a sharp bite, and one that acknowledges positions of power in all their abusive godlike capacities, even if they're held by the good guys too!