Out of Sight
“Soderbergh takes an almost perverse delight in pushing us to the edge …”
Steven Soderbergh understands foreplay. He knows the fun is in the tease — in knowing what you want and knowing you’re going to get it … eventually. The sex scene in his 1999 heist film Out of Sight is all coy glances, pregnant pauses, brushing hands, and remarkably little sex. Instead, we’re treated to two fabulously attractive people (Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney) skirting sexily around the inevitable. In a mastery of cross-cutting, Soderbergh alternates between the pair’s “casual” seduction at a hotel bar and what necessarily comes after (the bed). He never gives us too much, though; as soon as things start to get a little randy in the bedroom, Soderbergh snatches us right back to the bar, back to lingering looks and loaded silences. And as if that weren’t enough of a tease, he freeze-frames on all the right moments: fingers tracing faces, lips seconds away from lock. Soderbergh takes an almost perverse delight in pushing us to the edge, taunting us with what we want but can’t seem to get. And just when we think we’re never going to get the goods, Lopez takes one last sip of brandy, eyes Clooney suggestively, and murmurs, “Let’s get out of here.” Are we coming too? Hell, yeah.
This article appears in August 11 • 2000.
