Side Effects (2012)

Director Steven Sonderbergh has more than his fair share of fans .  Those fans will see similarities in subject matter between his first feature film sex, lies & videotape (1989) and this film. Many  fans will hope to find more similarities between his more recent film Contagion (2011) and this film, especially since both concern corrupt medical systems or officials and frightening public health hazards.

Sadly, Side Effects does not grip the spectator as Contagion does, even though its script struggles to make dramatic twists and turns and adds an interesting website. www.sideeffectsmayvary.com

Some details are realistic: drug company logos on pens, clandestine offers to pay Jude Law’s psychiatrist character $50,000 to test new meds on his patients, psychiatrist Catherine Zeta-Jones’ not-so-subtle push about new products, pharma-sponsored educational conferences, Jude Law asking for Adderall.  They all smack of the truth, sad to say. However, those who know Hitchcock immediately recognize near-mirror image repeats of the movie master’s framing shots, plot-driving devices, even damning character flaws. For them, there will be no suspense. Yet this movie is intended to be suspenseful.

Side Effects succeeds in opening questions about contemporary psychiatric practices. Yet so much of the plot is so far-fetched that even though salient details may be lost on those who dismiss everything about Side Effects as pure fantasy. Still, Side Effects captures contemporary  2012 Manhattan psychiatrist stereotypes well—or at least as well as De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) captured skyscraper psychiatry did over thirty years ago.

Like Sonderbergh’s Side Effects, De Palma’s Dressed to Kill also replicated Hitchcock’s tour de force in Psycho (1960). Like De Palma, Sonderbergh exploits unexpected sexual preferences to the max, but 2012 is not 1980. Shock value has simmered.

For many more examples of sinister psychiatrists in cinema, please  see Cinema’s Sinister Psychiatrists (McFarland, 2012).
www.drsharonpacker.com