Full Frontal
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring Blair Underwood, Julia Roberts, Catherine Keener, David Hyde Pierce and Mary McCormack
Rated R for language and some sexual content

I've heard three theories worth considering regarding Full Frontal and the poor reception that it's gotten. The first is that the film is an awful mistake and a significant blemish on the otherwise stellar career of Steven Soderbergh. I don't think much of that one. In any case it doesn't leave much else of interest to say about the matter, so let's move on. The second possibility is that the film is a throwaway from an artistic perspective. Miramax wanted to rebrand Soberbergh as an artsy guy to get him in position for the release of his next big film, Solaris, and Soderbergh wanted to get away from the glitz of Ocean's 11, so they threw Full Frontal together and wrote it off. There may be something to that one. But while it does provide some insight into the motivations behind the film, it doesn't help us consider what's actually being put up on the screen. In any case it's not an excuse for the poor audience reactions or critical reviews the movie is garnering. The third theory is my own and therefore will get most of the attention from here on out. To my mind Full Frontal is an interesting and complicated film. One that comes with a lot of previously required viewing and doesn't care much for the fact that it's appropriate audience is few and far between. Both of those things can be considered as flaws and go a long way to explain why not too many people have good things to say about it. What they don't do is make the movie a bad one. For all it's pretension and laziness, Full Frontal does a lot of interesting things and is at the least a noteworthy speedbump in Hollywood's silky smooth history. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of background work on the viewer's part to realize this and perhaps even then you have to do a little stretching.

Most of Full Frontal is shot on digital video and presented on a grainy, flushed out stock. It looks like a cross between an old Super 8 film and the camcorders that were available around the time Zack Morris was teaching us about cell phones. The first thing that needs to be noted is that digital video in this day and age looks nothing like what we see in this movie. The appearance of a DV movie is something a bit different from that of your standard 35mm print, but the clarity is excellent, the coloring is sharp and the focus is as clear as a director wants it to be. So Soderbergh chose this look for a reason.
The best explanation as to why comes from a connection between the film's appearance and its complicated story line. Full Frontal has been described as a movie within a movie within a movie within a movie, and this perception, convoluted as it may seem, is accurate enough for me. For the most part the story revolves around a group of people in Hollywood who have been invited to a party. Two of these characters, those played by Blair Underwood and Julia Roberts, happen to be actors who are in the process of making a film. So for the early portion of FF we see them only through movie they are making. A movie within a movie. The movie they're making happens to be about actors making a movie. A movie within a movie within a movie. These segments are shot on standard 35mm. The rest of the film portrays these characters and many others in their every day lives and is shot on the grainy DV. Part of the effect is fairly clear. Everyday existence is nothing like the movies, not even for Hollywood hotshots and their high-powered friends. That works for me, although I can understand why someone might be turned off by the less than aesthetically pleasing visuals that often result from the effect.

There's something more going on here, however. The look and the editing of these "regular" segments are pretty obvious in their references to other genres and eras of film history. Soderbergh employs jump cuts and cuts on similar images in a manner that recalls that of Jean-Luc Godard and the early years of the French New Wave in general. The self-aware narrative also fits in this mode. Additionally, the film's aesthetics and apparent disinterest in framing or composition seem very aware of similar trends being employed in recent European "social reality" films, particularly those being made in Scandinavia. (For further evidence of this connection note the similarity between the rules Soderbergh laid out for the making of this film to those of Denmark's Dogma 95. Soderbergh's is less restricting, but the influence seems apparent.) These films, like FF, try to take the formal aspects out of social filmmaking in an effort to put the emphasis back on the characters and their conflicts. So on the surface Soderbergh seems to be attempting to make a personal film about the real dilemmas of Hollywood people like himself. But a slightly closer look at the film pulls the rug out from under this idea rather quickly. Firstly, for every moment of "real" drama in this film, there's ten absurd and comical moments to go with it. We get a smoked up dog, dancing Gestapo men and a
scene about Julia Roberts' "tuna fingers". On top of it all Soderbergh breaks the illusion of reality in the film completely by eventually showing that even the "real" portion of the film was simply movie itself. The movie that was in a movie was in a movie that was in the movie, Full Frontal. He's certainly giving the megaplex audience a chance to see that the Hollywood way isn't the only way.

Soderbergh seems to be mocking Hollywood people, mocking Hollywood movies, mocking the alternative to Hollywood movies and quite possibly mocking his audience, members of which will either a) not understand what the hell is going on and want their nine bucks back or b) come up with some harebrained apologist explanation of the film like this one. In any case I liked this movie quite a bit. At the very least Soderbergh got me thinking and it's my opinion that anyone who doesn't dismiss the film immediately will find something about it that's worth considering. It's also a funny film and it occasionally provides the viewer with some bizarrely beautiful and interesting visuals. The lovemaking scene between Blair Underwood and Catherine Keener is an example of how Soderbergh completely changed his style in accordance with the vastly different story and technology involved in the film. Full Frontal is anything but what we've come to expect from Soderbergh and in some ways the film has done a great disservice to his image and the expectations that come along with the cast's countless stars and notables. If you have some knowledge of film history I think you'll enjoy Full Frontal if only for the interesting way that it references and plays with non-Hollywood conventions. If you don't I still think it can be a worthwhile movie if you come in with the right attitude, as the comedy, off beat drama and general weirdness of the film's form and content should be enjoyable to the open viewer.

Rating 83%

- Matt