Full Frontal. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Coleman Hough. With Blair Underwood, Julia Roberts, Catherine Keener, David Duchovny, Nicky Katt, Mary McCormack, and David Hyde Pierce. A Miramax Pictures release. (107 minutes) At the Showcase (Seekonk Route 6 only).

What with his avant-garde origins, his box-office success, his multiple Oscars, and his popularity with big stars and big studios, Steven Soderbergh shines as an example of how an independent filmmaker can triumph over the Hollywood system. So what a big disappointment that he tosses off the smug, self-indulgent Full Frontal as his return to the experimental form of his first film, sex, lies and videotape. The earlier film suggested that identity is only narcissism, truth merely another image, and everyone in the end a frustrated voyeur. Thirteen years later, this bit of piffle says, lighten up -- it's only a movie.

If only it were that much. Toying with Robert Altman's The Player and tinkering with Mike Figgis's Time Code, Full Frontal possesses neither the former's vitriol, ingenuity, and insight nor the latter's profundity and passion. It has, instead, a pseudo-vérité look (lots of grainy, jiggly, jump-cut digital footage), a glib multi-narrative structure set within a 24-hour period that includes a movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie, and, most important, an entitled air of coy self-consciousness. It makes Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending look Fellini-esque.

As for story and characters, that depends in part on how much you've enjoyed the embittered shrew that Catherine Keener has played in her last dozen or so roles (Lovely & Amazing, Your Friends & Neighbors, 8MM, Walking and Talking . . . ). Here her Lee is the head of human resources at an anonymous corporation who gets back at the world for her shitty job and her lousy marriage by abusing employees in her office. Stand on one leg, she orders, and recite the names of all the countries in Africa! Her favorite prop is a large, inflated world globe. An allusion to Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, perhaps? Who cares?

Lee is married to Carl (David Hyde Pierce), a Los Angeles Magazine (big laugh: that magazine and every other one seen in the film sports a cover photo of Brad Pitt -- who plays himself in the movie!) journalist whose way of getting back at the world is co-writing the screenplay for the terrible movie-within-the-movie (with another movie within that) that exists solely to confuse inattentive viewers and provide Soderbergh with the cinematic equivalent of standing on one leg and naming African countries. Called Rendezvous, it's about a TV actor (played by an actor played by Blair Underwood) starring in his first movie (opposite the real Brad Pitt!) who falls in love with a Los Angeles Magazine reporter (played by an actress played by Julia Roberts in a bad wig!) writing a profile about him. Meanwhile, everyone is in a flutter preparing for the 40th birthday of Rendezvous's mostly missing hotshot producer, Gus (David Duchovny).

This convoluted framework can't cover for the threadbare material provided by poet/playwright (and first-time screenwriter) Coleman Hough that was meant to fill it. The half-baked, half-improvised bits that sound like failed SNL skits include rehearsals for a play called The Sound and the Führer featuring Nicky Katt as a egomaniacal actor portraying a corporate executive-type Adolf ("That Goebbels!" he snaps at his pager. "He thinks it's a toy.") who would be right at home in the meeting rooms of Miramax Pictures. Which is also parodied, as Soderbergh disingenuously bites the hand that feeds him, employing a barking stand-in for Harvey Weinstein. "It's like showing a Picasso to a Labrador," one would-be auteur complains when his pitch gets shot down by the faux Harvey.

Maybe so, but Full Frontal is no Picasso, either. It's not even a Steven Soderbergh. The only recognizably human element is Lee's sister, Linda (Mary McCormack), a massage therapist who finally catches up with the elusive Gus (in a professional capacity, underscoring the film's onanistic overtone). Until that climactic meeting, Linda's salt-of-the-earth common sense provides a refreshing breather from the stifling insider atmosphere of the rest.

That and the transcendent moment that occurs when Full Frontal brushes up against a snippet from Soderbergh's The Limey. The few excerpted frames of Terence Stamp's vengeance-driven gangster from that film only emphasize the artificiality and flimsiness of Full Frontal by pointing out the brilliance the director has been capable of. With its tortured chronology and intense referentiality, The Limey never let you forget that it was only a movie. But unlike this bauble, it also reminded you how sublime a movie can be.

Issue Date: August 2- 8, 2002