Review: Full Frontal (2002)
Jon Popick
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
© Copyright 2002 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.
Coming nearly 13 years to the day since the release of his first film, sex,
lies and videotape, a little flick that won the top prize at Cannes,
established both the Sundance Film Festival and Miramax Films as major
Hollywood players, and grossed almost 25 times what it cost to make, Steven
Soderbergh's experimental Full Frontal hits theatres without packing an iota
of videotape's magic. Anyone familiar with the director's career knows he
followed up the out-of-left-field smash videotape with the disappointing
Kafka before making two good films nobody saw (King of the Hill and The
Underneath), two experimental films that even fewer people saw (Gray's
Anatomy and Schizopolis) and two critical darlings (The Limey and Out of
Sight) that set up his current reign of box office terror (Erin Brockovich,
Traffic and Ocean's Eleven), which has accumulated five Oscars and, at last
count, nearly a half-billion dollars in domestic box office alone.
If you didn't know any of that information going into Frontal, I can only
imagine how confused you'll be on the way out. The film plays like one long
inside joke for the very Hollywood types it seems to be trying to mock.
Frontal's shtick is that it's about a movie within a movie within a movie
(which may possibly be within yet another movie, but I stopped paying
attention after a while). The script is peppered with references to the
filmmaking industry that most moviegoers just aren't going to get (I know I
didn't) - like the part in which Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin plays a
guy playing a guy who looks a lot like Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein (the
credits list this character as "Harvey, maybe"), or one of the airplane
scenes that pans over to reveal Terence Stamp sitting next to the same woman
and uttering the same dialogue from Soderbergh's The Limey, or the
blink-and-you'll-miss-it dig at the relationship between Julia Roberts and
Denzel Washington in The Pelican Brief in a scene that features (gasp!)
Julia Roberts herself.
Frontal depicts the lives of its main characters over just one day as they
prepare for the birthday party of movie producer Gus (David Duchovny). Carl
(David Hyde Pierce) will be there, because he's a screenwriter. Carl's wife
Alice (Catherine Keener) will accompany him, even though she hates her
husband, and she'll also bring her sister, hotel masseuse Linda (Mary
McCormack). When we first meet Nicholas (Blair Underwood) and Catherine
(Roberts), we don't think they'll be going to Gus's party, but that's
because we don't know Nicholas and Catherine are really Calvin and
Francesca, two actors in Rendezvous, Gus's latest project (so it's a movie
about making movies within the movie?). Just Shoot Me's Enrico Colantoni is
either the director of a play called The Sound and the Führer (starring
Nicky Katt - hey, is that a play within the movie within the movie?) or the
potential love interest of e-mail pal Linda. Or maybe he's both, since he's
listed in the credits with two different names.
Sound complicated? It should. Wait'll you see the scene where the camera
pans back to reveal the set for Rendezvous. We chuckle a little bit (mostly
because David Fincher is directing that film), but when it pans further back
and reveals another movie set, we're baffled because the director of that
film is none other than Steven Soderbergh himself (with a black box
disguising his identity). Is it another movie with the movie within the
movie, or are we watching the actual making of Frontal? They say that truth
is sometimes stranger than fiction, but how are we supposed to know when the
lines between reality and illusion are this blurred? Do we even care? This
shit is practically Kafka II, in terms of both its lack of clarity and the
probable effect it will have on Soderbergh's career.
Frontal's studio has kept the premise of the film top-secret, most likely
because they have yet to find someone who can accurately describe it. They
don't have any problem trumpeting the zany particulars of the film's unusual
shooting style, however. Soderbergh, who directs from a screenplay written
by performance artist Coleman Hough (yet much of it was improvised) and
shoots under the pseudonym Peter Andrews, filmed it all in just 18 days and
spent just $2 million (still more than videotape cost). The miniscule budget
didn't allow for things like makeup and wardrobe people, or even trailers
for its stars (though there's a trailer shown in one of the movies within
the movie) who had to physically drive themselves to and from the set each
day. Can you imagine? Julia had to do her own hair! And makeup!
The unjust recipient of an "R" rating (there isn't any "full frontal" in the
film, though there is a rub-and-tug gag that was done better in 2 Days in
the Valley), Frontal is the most obnoxious
Let's-Get-Our-Friends-Together-To-Make-An-Important-Labor-of-Love film since
The Anniversary Party. You get the impression that the private screening
for Soderbergh and his actors will generate more laughs and raves than one
attended by regular folks who have to do their own hair and makeup every
day.
1:46 - R for language and some sexual content
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X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 748754
X-RT-TitleID: 1113207
X-RT-SourceID: 595
X-RT-AuthorID: 1146
X-RT-RatingText: 3/10