Full Frontal (2002)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
A day in the life of a group of men and women in Hollywood, in the hours leading up to a friend's birthday party.
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What critics compared Full Frontal to
This last notion is made explicit when the movie concludes on the sort of fourth-wall-breaking effect “presenter” Steven Soderbergh employed more successfully in Full Frontal .
Soderbergh can speak with authority on the subject: over nearly three decades, his films have ranged from eclectic indie projects (Schizopolis, Full Frontal, Bubble) to box office hits (Ocean's Eleven, Magic Mike).
A big deal has been made in the press about the casting in "The Girlfriend Experience," Steven Soderbergh's latest " Full Frontal "/" sex, lies and videotape "-esque dip outside of mainstream moviemaking.
When Steven Soderbergh strays from his glossy, star-studded extravaganzas and makes the experimental films that are smaller, weirder and seemingly truer to his heart, they can work beautifully ("Solaris," "Bubble") or they're self-indulgent bores ("Full Frontal," "Che").
The Girlfriend Experience, like Gray's Anatomy and, gulp, Full Frontal, is one of those.
Sure, he’s crafted such commercial hits as Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the Oceans franchise, but he always goes back to a more “personal” style of filmmaking, branching off and exploring the medium in efforts like Bubble, Full Frontal, and his most recent turn, The Girlfriend Experience.
“The Girlfriend Experience” is a palate cleanser for director Steven Soderbergh, who embarks on one of these odd “personal” films every few years (“Bubble,” “Full Frontal”) when his fingers tire of counting “Ocean’s” trilogy money.
Heck, even Jeff Garlin’s studio chief Don Wallach is more or less an echo of the Harvey Weinstein facsimile that the comic actor played in Steven Soderbergh’s Full Frontal.
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The movie that’s always seemed to embody Soderbergh’s ambivalence was Full Frontal, his gag from 2002 on the absurdities of the film industry.
From Solaris, the science-fiction bore so brain-damaged it’s an unintentional comedy, to a smarmy mess called Full Frontal, concocted from rag-bin remnants, and a dozen debacles in between, he’s a master of what I call “viewer indifference.”
Now, with Full Frontal, Soderbergh has essentially gone full circle and made his artiest flick yet.
It's ripe material for Soderbergh , whose films often explore how things and ideas take on the value of currency, be it sex ("Magic Mike"), success ("Full Frontal") or even health ("Contagion").