CINEMA: William Pretorius
IN Disclosure, the happily married Tom Sanders (Michael Douglas) is sexually harrassed by his new boss, Meredith Johnson (Demi Moore), an old flame who is now vice- president of a hi-tech firm which manufactures virtual reality systems.
There’s an immediate credibility gap here. Who on earth would want to harass Douglas, one of most unattractive, overrated leading men in American movies? When he rejects her, Johnson, a woman scorned, charges him with sexual harassment — and he countercharges. Other power plays come into force: millions of dollars are on the line and the firm can’t afford a sex scandal.
The film is really a version of Fatal Attraction, in which Douglas played a philandering husband terrorised by a deranged Glenn Close. Here he’s a nice family man who doesn’t philander but is terrorised anyway — gosh, women are so evil.
Ideologically, this isn’t about sexual harrassment: it’s a whitewash job for men. There is no argument or insight about sexual harassment, only accusation and counter- accusation, the usual goodies-versus-baddies formula. If it had been a male revenge movie, something nasty and satirical about relations between the sexes, it might have been more interesting. As it is, Douglas’ character does a bit of tub-thumping against militant feminist arguments that men are evil beasts, arguments which are dated and not very convincing to begin with.
And Johnson is the sort of woman a nudie magazine for women, like Playgirl, would construct as an ideal reader — aggressive about wanting her every orifice filled by male centrefolds. The sex scene between her and Sanders is self-conscious — her panties are ripped off, his fly opened — like the cover of a Barbara Cartland novel gone very smutty.
The virtual reality scenes are interesting, though. When seducing Sanders, Johnson, perhaps thinking of the machines the firm makes, says they have freedom from physical bodies, from race and gender, and can relate as pure consciousness. The movie is really about cyberpunk desire — the characters are illustrations, not people; the sets, with their repetitive arches, windows and patterns, have the geometric stylisation of virtual reality images.
There’s a fascinating theme lost, here. As is it, the film remains a corporate thriller with sexual harassment attached as a gimmick to generate publicity. All that’s really harassed in this movie is the viewer’s intelligence.