Full Frontal

A spectacular trip up Steven Soderberg’s own arse, the unbelievably pretentious Full Frontal might go some way to erode the enormous, if inflated, credibility his genre-hopping output has so far gained him. Made for $2million in eighteen days, and shot according to ‘rigorous’ Dogme rules, the entire project is suffused with such austere, oppressive avoidance of anything resembling humour that one rapidly ceases to be impressed with its technical virtues.

The ‘story’, such as it is, follows several neurotic and unappealing Californians on the way to their birthday party for film producer Gus Delario, which then turns out to itself be a film in production.

The cast, strangely, all seem very impressed with the low-frills nature of Full Frontal, this being the kind of ‘indie’ side project that Hollywood superstars fall over themselves to associate with. Hence, Julia Roberts, David Duchovny and Catherine Keener are on board, though none displays enough life to really lift the whole affair out of the murk.

Still, with so few virtues on offer, we can only be impressed that Roberts and company had to actually drive themselves to work in order to conform to the film’s gruelling rules of production. Fuck me, they’ll be peeling their own grapes next...