side effects

Spoiler Alert: This blog post discusses nearly all of the film’s many plot twists. 

Last month, director Steven Soderbergh seemed to “come out” as the gay community’s latest Hollywood ally when he complained to the press about the impossibility of finding $5 million—a pauper’s sum in the film industry—to make a Liberace biopic because the project was deemed “too gay." If Side Effects’ sloppy gay characters are any indication, though, perhaps it’s a relief that this pharma-thriller will cap Soderbergh’s multiplex career. 

Side Effects stars Rooney Mara as a depressed waif named Emily Taylor, Jude Law as her psychiatrist Dr. Banks, and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Emily’s suspiciously suspicious former therapist Dr. Siebert. The film begins as a worthwhile, if ham-fisted, exploration of the inherent neurochemical mystery of pills and the questionably cozy relationships between doctors and pharmaceutical companies. 

But as Side Effects contorts through its preposterous plot twists, it becomes clear that the film’s real preoccupation isn’t the sins of the drug industry or the casual consumption of mind-altering tablets. In fact, the film neatly sweeps all those issues under the rug to warn moviegoers of far urgent danger within its paranoid universe: evil lesbians bent on destroying the lives of innocent straight men.

Before I started writing about women's reproductive health, I'd pretty much resigned myself to being a film journalist for life. All the free movies, premieres and parties were a lot of fun, but I was beginning to think that my choice to give a film five stars or one star was being unfairly swayed by whether the complimentary pastry was stale or if the air conditioning was turned up too high.