*Spoiler Alert* The following film review has details about the film that reveal the resolution of suspenseful plot lines. Please do not read if you don’t want to know the ending.
Today I saw Side Effects, which is directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Channing Tatum. This film was well written and well acted. The reviews for the film have praised the director, Soderbergh for the film’s Hitchcockian elements. Calling it “cinema’s first pharmacological thriller,” among other praises, the film has won the hearts of critics. This psycho-sexual drama is, on one level, concerned with the ethical issues surrounding the increasingly overwhelming dependence of Americans on prescription anti-depressant medications. The rest of the film was a cautionary tale about the dangers of letting your girlfriend near lesbians. The terror of this film is actually a woman who turns her back on the promise of heterosexual marriage. The main characters are a white, middle-class couple. The film begins with the reuniting of a wife with a husband who has just gotten out of prison for a crime involving insider trading. Before long we find out that her addiction to anti-depressants has caused a severe psychotic break. Eventually, it leads to the murder of her husband. However, the real danger lies with her former lesbian psychiatrist. The two women frame her new, male psychiatrist and cause him to lose his practice, his professional standing, his wife and to question his own sanity. Again, it’s the homosexual that is the threat to the nuclear family and must be stopped. By the end of the film, we are all comforted by her dismissal and his redemption.
References
BrothaQueer 