by Frank Wilkins
Why is it that athletes always want to be actors, actors want to be athletes, athletes want to be recording stars, actors want to be directors and directors want to make wierd little off-beat films like Full Frontal? I guess they don't fear utter failure and complete rejection like most of us. While he receives an A for bravery and effort, Soderbergh completely fails with regards to quality of product of the highly experimental Full Frontal.
Full Frontal, shot mostly on digital video in a meager 18 days, is a progressive patchwork piece about the people who make up the fragile center of the Hollywood film culture and industry.
With his box-office and critical mega-hits, Erin Brockovich and Traffic, it's not necessary that Soderbergh experiment. But a deeper look into his filmography reveals a kind of passion with experimental filmmaking at its origins. Looking at the groundbreaking Sex, Lies and Videotape, the intelligent Solaris and now the scatter shooting Full Frontal, we begin to understand that his approach to film is from the aspect of its most basic roots...that of people being themselves in front of the camera.
Intended as a film within a film, Full Frontal is centered around invitees to a film producer's (David Duchovney) 40th birthday party. Lee Bright (Katherine Keener) is an over-the-top Human Resources exec who is about to leave her husband, Carl (David Hyde Pierce), a screenwriter. Lee's underachieving sister, Linda (Mary McCormack) is a hotel masseuse on the verge of meeting her Internet contact Arty (Enrico Colantoni) whom she thinks is a painter, but in reality is Carl's screenwriting partner. For good measure, throw in an irritable movie star named Francesca (Julia Roberts) and an aloof actor Calvin (Blair Underwood)
What's interesting, and what is the only creative aspect of Full Frontal, is the way in which the film is shot. The lives of these sad and troubled characters are followed by a grainy digital camera that gives us a voyeuristic and investigative view of their pathetic little existence. We see the lives of these people unfurl in front of us in a reality TV type fashion as if we are watching it through hidden cameras with available light.
Deeply contrasted to this story line is the perfectly filmed movie within the movie. Interspersed throughout the story we see Carl and Arty's movie, Rendezvous, a sappy story about a reporter named Catherine, played by the aforementioned Francesca (Julia Roberts), who is assigned to present a bio on upcoming film sensation Nicholas (Blair Underwood), played by the above Calvin, an actor who asserts that blacks don't get any leading roles in Hollywood.
Coleman Hough's script is innovative yet bland. There may be something great lurking behind the labyrinthine plot and the way the movie unfolds is actually quite creative, but the dialogue is very vanilla and is most of the time actually downright boring. Soderbergh's fast pace keeps things moving however, as he sorts through the different personality flaws.
There are a few funny moments mixed into the film's plot, but most of its 101 minutes are wasted on apathy and tedium. I'm sure we are supposed to find a humorous tale about the schizophrenic nature of Hollywood's insiders, but in the end it's just a boring dialogue driven experiment that nobody really cares about.
Frank Wilkins
Full Frontal (2002)
