To my surprise, Side Effects gave something more than a dull, predictable narration of how destructing people with mental issues are for others and themselves. In fact it's a story about deception, acting and the rotten nature of today's financial and stock market system.
Emily (Rooney Mara), hardly a femme-fatale but an admitted pretty girl, accepts her long-sentenced husband back at home. One would expect this would make her happy; at last they can be a couple again and leave the past behind. But no, Martin's (Channing Tatum) not found the secret to make a woman happy.
Her having a nice job working on a Mac as a designer is not enough (jobless designers you can now facepalm). Having a f*cking awesome cool woman boss is not enough. Having a nice car and a home as the minimum American Dream suggets is not enough. Having a non-bitch mother-in-law is not enough. Having a husband who's willing to make her happy and finding soon a Houston based business opportunity, is not enough.
No, she has to get depressed, sleepwalking, crying out of the blue for no reason, scaring an underground security emploee to death by attempting to fall on the tracks, and finally smashing in her shiny car directly on a garage. Wearing the seatbelt... Even so, her innocent cute eyes manage to convinve Dr. Banks (Jude Law) to let her avoid hospitalization and go home, leading to his eventual doom.
We have to admit, Emily's a super successful depressed person. She ruins her future, herself and her beloved ones just as most people with mental issues do. She even ruins her doctor's life! And while far so this girl has caused us the ultimate rage-face with her doings, she remains the victim! In fact, in order to tell us how miserable Emily is - as most depressed people - the director Steven Soderbergh shows us the stock-market style negotiations among doctors and pharmaceutical companies' representatives. There's big money here in drug promotion, a game in which everyone has a role: patients are the guinea-pigs, doctors are simple contractors and the state thrives through its absence.
 
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Anyway, the film wishes not to focus on this, or it won't have time to proceed to a more spicy development. Besides, the first 40 mins find you yawning, since the view of a zombie-girl staring at the air can't be very exciting.
The all-mighty doctor 'n' gloating Jude Law has a really hard time when carefree Emily slaughters her husband like a chicken; she's technically nuts, so the authorities are tempted to blame Dr. Banks for not predicting the side-effects caused by that new drug Ablixa - suspiciously recommended by the cunning Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Banks was supposed to lock Emily up in an institution in the first place when she decided to crash her car.
The case turns into a national-wide scandal and the media lust for the "body" of Banks, who in the meanwhile is dumped by his wife. Of course, he's not an idiot. Quickly, he discovers Emily's fake depression and that behind all this is a lesbian plot devised by Emily and her girlfriend, ex-doc Victoria. It seems the two sluts set Banks up to cause a financial meltdown of Ablixa's producer's stocks. Right after, a rival-pharma company's stocks would soar making the lesbian stockholder couple rich, very rich. I wonder if the SEC would ever see to something like that.
+1 to a film showing exactly how unjust a financial and stockmarket system is, that allows greedy minds to make lots of money out of thin air, or worse, out of an acting that looks legal.
The truth is the two womens' plan was brilliant, while the lesbian affection scenes adds quite a nice touch of .. interest. Well-acting Jude Law is worth to watch, especially how he outsmarts the two females proving once more how bitchy they can be to each other.
Sorry to say this, but, Catherine stays attractive but looks like a mess. It's ironical to play the psychiatries while it is said she had psychological issues herself. A remarkable woman and actress, nevertheless.
As for Emily, well. A girl who decides to wait years for her husband's release from jail in order to murder him and get herself on a trial; and all this to avenge the money and luxury taken away from her, well, surely is not 100% sane.
If you're sane, you break up like a normal person and you go live the passion with the woman or the boy you love. Perhaps Emily did need the medication after all.
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