Review by Dan Krovich

August 1, 2002

Full Frontal is a film about relationships. Full Frontal is an ensemble movie about eight friends whose lives intersect over the course of one day. Full Frontal is a film about movie-making and the movie industry. Full Frontal is an exercise in the grammar of film. Full Frontal is a retrospective nod to the previous films of director Steven Soderbergh. Full Frontal is all of those things put together like a glorious jigsaw puzzle that is missing some pieces and has some rough edges that don't quite fit together perfectly.

The basic gist of Full Frontal is that there is a film within the film, called Rendezvous. In Rendezvous, Catherine, a magazine reporter played by Francesca (who is an actress played by Julia Roberts), is doing a feature article on Nicholas, an actor played by Calvin (who is an actor played by Blair Underwood). Interviewer and interviewee contend with uneasy romantic feelings for each other during an airplane trip to the set of the movie that is to be Nicholas' big break (Yes, that would be the movie within the movie within the movie). Meanwhile, we eavesdrop on the personal lives of the people around the making of Rendezvous on the day of the film's producer's 40th birthday party. There are the writers: Carl (David Hyde Pierce), a magazine writer whose marriage to Lee (Catherine Keener), a personnel director, has withered; and Arty (Enrico Colantoni), a playwright who is opening his new play, The Sound and the Fuhrer, starring a temperamental actor playing Hitler (Nicky Katt). There is also Linda (Mary McCormack), Lee's sister and a massage therapist who is about to take a weekend trip to meet the man with whom she has been having an Internet fling.

If that all sounds confusing, it's meant to be. In some respects, Soderbergh doesn't bother explaining what's "real" and what's the movie, though he does clearly delineate the two in his filming style. Rendezvous looks like any other movie you would see on the screen. Clear, crisp, shot on film with full coverage and edited to look like a standard romantic movie. The reality behind Rendezvous is shot with a hand-held digital video camera, and the picture is further degraded to make it look grainy. Besides providing the clue to tell the movie within the movie apart, it also illustrates how the artifice of filmmaking is used to manipulate versus the grittier documentary-style video. Of course, the video is ultimately exposed as just a different type of artifice.

This is just one of the ways that Soderbergh winks at the audience. In many ways, Full Frontal is more a cinematic exercise than a film. It is somewhat gimmicky, but Soderbergh is able to pull these gimmicks off with an ease that makes them revelatory rather than obnoxious. Beyond breaking down the fourth wall, he goes ahead and rips apart the floor and the ceiling as well. Soderbergh makes a cameo appearance as a film director, but is it as the director of Rendezvous or as the director of Full Frontal? Side characters talk about the plot of a movie, but are they talking about Rendezvous or Full Frontal? Admittedly, these aren't groundbreaking devices, but they do make the point.

Soderbergh also seems to be using Full Frontal to reflect over his career, or perhaps to give his fans a treat, as it is mildly analogous to what Kevin Smith did in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, though much more subtle. Someone familiar with Soderbergh's lesser-seen films will likely get more out of the film than someone who is only familiar with him as the director of Erin Brokovich, Traffic, and Ocean's 11. A character in Full Frontal talks about a dream he had, and in that dream he happens to be a character from an earlier Soderbergh film, repeating lines verbatim. A character from a different Soderbergh film shows up not only in the film, but also in the film within the film as the same character. There are also other nods, and surely references that would take repeated viewings to pick up.

All this is well and good, but does it make for an interesting movie? People who run screaming from films with labels like experimental and non-linear might want to stay away, but Full Frontal doesn't go over the top with either of these concepts, and it does maintain a strong, if somewhat fractured, narrative throughout. It ultimately returns to Soderbergh's sex, lies, and videotape roots in being a movie about relationships. It is ultimately optimistic, as while characters don't necessarily change as they muddle through their angst, events occur that do at least help them to rediscover parts of themselves that had been hidden out of necessity, as a defense mechanism, or just out of simple neglect.

The performances from the cast, particularly in the "real-life" scenes, ground the movie. Even though Soderbergh goes to pains to expose the movie-making manipulation, the actors are still able to imbue the characters with humanity and make you feel for them. Though the ensemble cast doesn't resort to one-upsmanship, while each was on the screen, I had the opinion that they were giving the best performance in the film. It's a credit to the ensemble cast that no one ultimately stands out (though Nicky Katt as Hitler does come pretty close to being a scene-stealer in a comparatively minor role). Mixing the digital video-shot scenes with voiceover interviews sometimes emphasizes motivations, yet often exposes the disconnect between what we think and what we do.

As the movie's poster says, "Everybody needs a release", and Full Frontal seems to be something of a release for Soderbergh. After making three hugely successful films, even though he has seemed to find a way to be comfortable maintaining an indie sensibility while making mainstream studio films, Soderbergh has aggressively returned to low-budget, small-crew filmmaking. The result is likely to feel indulgent and unsatisfying to some, but if there is anyone who has earned to right to indulge a bit, it is Soderbergh. If you're willing to go along for the ride, accepting the film on his terms, you're in for a gratifying movie experience.

View other columns by Dan Krovich