Steven Soderbergh still swears he's heading into retirement, with the HBO Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra set to air next year, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. But first there's what will hopefully not actually be his final theatrically release film, Side Effects, which debuted its first trailer online today. Take a look below.
It's very telling that the film is advertised as coming from "the makers of Contagion' rather than any other Soderbergh film. This seems like a gripping, potentially intense drama about the pharmaceutical industry, though it's pretty fascinating how much they manage to show us without it being really clear what the drug is that Rooney Mara is taking, why it becomes so dangerous, or how exactly everything goes so crazy after she takes it. Soderbergh probably doesn't deserve full credit for keeping the details at bay, but knowing he'll be the one unfolding the mystery makes it that much more intriguing.
He's obviously gathered a lot of his previous collaborators-- Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jude Law, Channing Tatum-- to help end his career on a bang, but it's exciting to see Mara at the center of it all, since she rocketed into stardom with her performance as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but nobody's seen much of her playing a character who's more, well, normal. There's no release date yet set for Side Effects, but we have every reason to feverishly anticipate it-- and then hope that Soderbergh decides to go back on his word and make many, many more films after this one.
