Steven Soderbergh is a brilliant director and he's one that is experimental by heart but when your already established in the industry these experimental films can be pretty risky. As much as I admire him he fails badly here. This is one of those movie in a movie plots and there are several characters that the film follows and all have some sort of connection whether they know it or not. Julia Roberts plays a reporter named Catherine and she's interviewing an actor named Nicholas but while on his flight he finds a love letter and thinks Catherine slipped it into his bag. But she denies it and he keeps pestering her about it all the way to the movie set. Here the film shifts and we see that Catherine and Nicholas are really actors named Francesca and Calvin and that the whole flight was part of a film. Meanwhile, a woman named Lee (Catherine Keener) is sick of her marriage and writes her husband Carl (David Hyde Pierce) a letter but he doesn't see it. Lee has set up her sister Linda (Mary McCormack) on a blind date with a producer named Gus (David Duchovny) but Linda works as a masseuse and has already given Gus a massage and agreed to an extra 500 dollars for "Release". Linda needs the money because she is going to Arizona to see a man she met on the Internet. This man is Arty (Enrico Colantoni) and he's a director and writer of a play about Hitler and they have both lied to each other about they're age. Steven Soderbergh shot this film with mostly handheld digital cameras and in several scenes its very difficult to watch the action that takes place on the screen. Soderbergh usually uses these types of cameras for his films and he's usually a master craftsman with the way his films look and "Traffic" is a beautifully shot film. But this is not and it's the type of film that young film directors make when they have no money. Soderbergh has the experience and knowledge to at least shoot his films in a more professional manner. If your a young fledgling director and so is your cinematographer than we can understand shots and scenes being blurry and out of focus. But I don't understand shooting a film like that if you don't have to. Script and story is mainly about how things appear one way on the surface but are different when you look closer. The actors that come away from this looking the best are McCormack, Keener and Pierce. They're ordeal is more understandable and the performances are pretty good. But this is film that just doesn't work and Soderbergh's attempt at style ends up being completely annoying. I give him credit for trying something different but he should have known better.
Review of Full Frontal
