Side Effects
(2013)
(SPOILERS) At first it appears that Steven Soderbergh’s
final cinematic release (for the time being) may be taking the Traffic approach to the pharmaceutical
industry. It wouldn’t be a surprise, as the director likes his issue-led films
(which also include Erin Brokovich
and Contagion). But Side Effects veers from such a path so preposterously
that it leaves him with nothing to say on the subject. It ends up as an above average
thriller, but completely forsakes discussing prescription dependency for easy
twists and cheap thrills.
It’s near to the reverse of how he treated Contagion. There he had a wonderful
opportunity to make a truly frightening pandemic horror but instead took such a
restrained, clinical approach that it rarely hit home. The director’s always
been a bit frosty, emotionally disengaged from his projects and characters, and
sometimes this disposition is more appropriate than at others. Here, he shows
his usual technical virtuosity in letting us in on the foggy haze of the
medicated, suicidal Emily (Rooney Mara), and his detachment means we’re
somewhat blindsided when Scott Z Burns’ script starts piling on the unlikeliest
and most sensational of revelations.
Emily’s husband Martin (Channing Tatum) is released from
prison and soon after she attempts suicide. Her newly appointed shrink Jonathan
(Jude Law) prescribes a range of medication, with limited benefits, before her
old psychiatrist Victoria (Catherine Zeta-Jones) suggests a new drug, Ablixa.
At first this seems great; it perks up her sex drive, with just a slightly
unwanted side effect of somnambulism against it. It’s in such a state that she
kills Martin one night.
Killing off Tatum 30 minutes into the film makes for a
highly effective Psycho moment;
certainly, I didn’t see it coming. But I presumed this would go to emphasise
the meat of the tale; prescription meds are bad, kids. Emily pleads insanity,
and attention shifts to prescription-happy Jonathan and the gradual
disintegration of his professional and personal life. He starts to look around
for others to blame, and wouldn’t this be just the kind of self-denial we’d
expect? Particularly as he has more than one theory; either Emily was faking
her episodes or he’s a victim of a cover-up by the pharma company.
Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t turn out to be the latter. As with Contagion, Soderbergh retreats from
anything slightly radical once he has raised an issue (there it was Law’s
anti-science holistic conspiracist), to the extent that one suspects the
director of a lurking conservatism (small “c”). So not only do the thriller
elements engulf any serious discussion of the medicated society, but also he
arrives at a polar opposite position; the antagonist, who is not mentally ill, is forced onto drugs
at the behest of her triumphant psychiatrist (the beleaguered hero). We’re led
to the point where we cheer on Jonathan screwing with a healthy (as much as a
murderer can be, anyway) person’s brain chemistry.
Soderbergh is less than scrupulous in his choices
throughout, which at least keeps you on your toes. The subjective way he treats
Emily’s state of mind during the opening sections is a big fat visual cheat
(she’s faking it so she’s not in the “poisonous fog” she describes to
Jonathan), but he can’t really be accused of a Stage Fright-esque hoodwinking. It’s just a bit sneaky. By the time
we discover that Emily is having a lesbian affair with Victoria, and they
hatched their grand plot together (which involved making Jonathan a dupe), he’s
keeping things moving so adeptly that we barely have time to stop and think
about how far-fetched the whole thing is (be it faking a sodium amatol
interrogation, manipulating stock prices for drugs or relying on the duping of
a random brain care specialist for the scheme to succeed).
Which means that, while Side
Effects is highly entertaining, the tangent it veers off on is a
disappointment given where it started. The sheer blaséness of attitudes to
medication during the opening sections promises so much more. Jonathan is
dosing his clients at the drop of a hat (he even tells his wife, “It doesn’t make you anything your not, it
just makes it easier to be who you are” as he plies her with pills).
There’s a great scene of Jonathan and his partners being wined and dined by a
pharma rep looking for sponsors for a new product. And Jonathan is not a bad
guy; he shows due concern for his patients when he is with them. The problem is
that he is there only superficially, and he doesn’t attend to the fine print. As
such he has no qualms over the business of dishing out magic cure-alls,
favouring wall-to-wall engagements over quality client service. The falling
apart of his world initially seems like a judgement on his lack of oversight,
but turns round to a point where he is without guilt and emerges victorious. It
doesn’t feel quite right.
I’ve said this a couple of times of his recent work, but
Law’s gone from an actor I really didn’t care for to one who is consistently
turning in strong performances in interesting movies. At first it looks like
he’s a bit player here, with Mara as the lead, so it’s another of the film’s clever
shifts when he becomes the focus. Mara is commanding in an unsympathetic role
and she and Tatum make for a very natural couple (too good to be true); it’s
not really her fault that Emily’s motivation for killing Tatum is lacking (her
loss of lifestyle really cheesed her
off!) Zeta-Jones bears the signs of visiting Nicole Kidman’s plastic surgeon,
which lends her an air of supernatural menace. Like Mara, her characterisation
suffers in the last third of the film but she does get to wallop Law with a
handbag.
One could imagine Brian De Palma being right at home with
this kind of material, and he’d certainly have played up its more trashy
aspects. Soderbergh lends Side Effects
an air of respectability it might not quite deserve, or at least warrant. For
all that it shirks saying anything of value this is manages to satisfy as
wriggling, writhing thriller that keeps you hooked. It’s just not great brain
fodder.
***1/2