We meet Emily (Rooney Mara), a young New Yorker whose husband Martin (Channing Tatum) is being released from prison after 5 years for insider trading. She is depressed, and even her husband's return home can't repair her weakening state of mind. She attempts suicide by crashing her car into a parking garage wall, but fails. She starts seeing a psychiatrist Dr. Banks (Jude Law), who has a keen interest in helping her, and prescribes her a new antidepressant called Ablixa. At first, the pill is effective: Emily's joyful, energetic, she has passionate sex with her husband. It all turns sour as the drug causes her to sleepwalk, and eventually leads her to murder in her unconscious state. She is imprisoned, and Dr. Banks comes under fire as the person who may be responsible for this unintentional tragedy. But as his life starts falling apart, both at home and at work, Dr. Banks becomes something of a pseudo-detective and finds the incident is not everything that it seems.
This story is particularly fascinating, being that it starts out as a meditation on depression in the modern age and a world where everyone is on some kind of pill and the big-business pharmaceutical companies are sitting on top of their mountains of cash, and it turns into a sexual conspiracy thriller, a la classics like Double Indemnity & Dial M For Murder. It's interesting looking back on the film and realizing that none of the things you thought you knew in the first half hour are relevant in the big scope of the picture, it's all a facade. The structure of this screenplay is complex, and the fact that it transitions smoothly from a huge change in tone while also switching protagonists is credit to screenwriter Scott Z. Burns.
Jude Law, in his finest role to date, exemplifies a typical leading man in a Hitchcock film. A professional that is being framed or in a middle of a conspiracy, who isolates himself because no one will believe him, and whose obsession causes the rest of his life to spiral out of control. Dr. Banks is incredibly deft and intelligent and confident in his abilities to find information, and when you see him start to doubt himself, Law is fascinating to watch crumble. He is an absurdly charming actor, but to watch his character manipulate and deceive others to find the truth shows Law's greatest strengths as a performer. Also impressive is Vinessa Shaw as Dr. Banks' wife and voice of reason when he's hashing out his conspiracy theories, and Catherine Zeta Jones as Emily's icy former shrink, who plays an integral role in the final act. The leading lady steals the show though. Maybe I'm overblowing it, but I seriously think, with Side Effects, Rooney Mara sits alone atop the mountain of the greatest actresses of her generation (Carey Mulligan is very close behind, followed by Jennifer Lawrence). She is asked to wear so many faces in this movie: depressed, elated, sedated, zombified, manic, seductive, claustrophobic. Mara transcends the very definition of these emotions. She's not a showy actress, she has a low, often monotone voice. And that's what makes her ability so impressive. She's a subtextual performer, she speaks volumes without really doing that much physically. Nothing's on the surface, but the layers beneath are immensely affecting.
As with any Soderbergh film, the cinematography and camera work are a staple in setting a mood. Soderbergh shoots his movies himself (under the pseudonym Peter Andrews), and he paints Manhattan as grey and gloomy, much like the depression ads we see on TV with a rain cloud following over someone's head. The interiors are dark with bright exterior light pouring in behind shades and curtains, again probably how a depressed person views the world. He uses a shallow depth of field (background's fuzzy while performer's in foreground, vice versa) and often frames characters, mostly Emily, through small windows and employs close-ups to create a sense of being trapped, that their world is collapsing in on them. The music and editing go hand-in-hand here and create a consistent rhythm throughout the film. The score by Thomas Newman is fairy-taleish and lures us in like a lullaby, and then at times becomes haunting (during the murder) and fiendish (the aftermath of the murder).
Steven Soderbergh has announced this will be his last theatrically released film, as he's taking an indefinite leave of absence to work on other art forms such as painting and theatre, saying he's hit a wall artistically, and would need some sort of re-invention to return. I don't know what he means by that, but my feeling is he will return to cinema, he's only 50 years old, and when you're as good at something as Soderbergh is at directing, you don't give it up midway through your career. He's had a long varied career starting with sex, lies, and videotape (1989), which gave the Sundance Film Festival mainstream Hollywood significance, and he's since conquered many genres: the revenge con movie (The Limey), the ensemble heist movie (The Ocean's Trilogy), the satirical civil lawsuit comedy (The Informant!), the drug-trade epic (Traffic), the epidemic disease movie (Contagion), and, of course, the male stripper drama (Magic Mike). He is a wizard with the camera and with color palettes, and getting in and out with his films without leaving too much of a mess. With his last three films, he's arguably on the best streak of his career. Soderbergh is famous for going one for them, one for me, meaning he does a big Hollywood picture and with that check goes and makes a cheaper, more experimental film. I think he's been combining the best of both worlds in this most recent stretch, and it's a shame that we won't see any new stuff from him for the time being. The film industry needs artists like Steven Soderbergh. But as Dr. Banks says, "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior." If Soderbergh's addiction to telling great stories through the most accessible art medium is a good predictor, then he will be back eventually, and better than ever.
4 out of 4 stars
-Rex
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