Ann, a frustrated wife, enters into counseling due to a troubled marriage. Unbeknownst to her, her husband John has begun an affair with her sister. When John’s best friend Graham arrives, his penchant for interviewing women about their sex lives forever changes John and Ann’s rocky marriage.
Despite the title and apparent subject matter, this isn't just an excuse to make a mainstream-adjacent film about sex, as the long later scene between James Spader and Andie MacDowell clearly establishes. And unlike most directors wishing to establish the aura of an auteur devoid of influences, Steven Soderbergh adds some clear allusions to other movies, such as the direct quote from Apocalypse Now by the bar hound and the broader and more diffuse influence of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960). (I'd be tempted to put this down to this being his first feature film, but he later would remake Solaris.)
