“Black Bag” makes monogomy sexy again

A director having two great movies out within one year is already an embarrassment of riches for the cinema-starved public. But two great movies out within two months? That’s like being served the will to live and the meaning of life on the same platter and being told that you can indulge in both. 

Watching Steven Soderbergh’s “Black Bag” — the director’s near-immediate follow-up to January’s “Presence,” both written by notoriously economical screenwriter David Koepp — really does feel that gratifying. Not that anyone should be surprised. In his nearly four-decade career, Soderbergh has proven himself the king of directorial reinvention, nimbly sliding between genre and style without losing touch with his signature aesthetics. (The piss-yellow color grading in the film’s opening shot is distinctly his, and seeing it conjures an immediate joy akin to plopping onto the couch after a long, trying day.) 

What’s more, in a time when mainstream cinema is often playing it safe, Soderbergh is all too happy to experiment. Though the risks in “Black Bag” aren’t quite as conspicuous as the camera-as-a-ghost conceit of “Presence,” they pay off in equally breathtaking dividends. “Black Bag” is movie-watching at its finest, in that its wealth of espionage intrigue is bound to be as enjoyable on a plane or on that comfy couch as it is in the theater. Just make no mistake: This is the most delightful moviegoing experience you can have this year, one that’s worth the price of admission several times over.

Soderbergh crafts an atmosphere of hazy sexuality right from the jump, with his camera hovering just behind the slender yet agile frame of George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) in an energetic long take that opens this sexy spy thriller. George, a top agent at a London intelligence agency, meanders through the chimeric bowels of a posh nightclub, hunting for a contact who’s got some bad news waiting. George’s wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), is among five suspects in the company, wanted for treason after a mysterious weapon goes missing from their headquarters. George’s mission is to weed out the traitor in the house, even if it means putting a bullet in his beloved spouse. 

Cate Blanchett in “Black Bag” (Courtesy of Focus Features and Universal Pictures)A spy release that doubles as a marriage drama is nothing new. There have been plenty over the first quarter of this century alone; “Allied,” “The Americans,” “The Incredibles” and hell, a “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” movie and television series. It’s a formula that works almost every time, built on one simple question that most marriages confront at one point or another: Can you really trust your spouse? And though plenty have sought an answer to this age-old query, none have managed to do it with so much efficient wit as “Black Bag,” named for the phrase these deliciously deceptive agents use to bury secrets under the code of confidentiality. A whisper here, a wink there; it all goes inside the bottomless bag, meant to snare and snuff out interpersonal mysteries before they become marital weaknesses. 

But George and Kathryn aren’t the only couple at their agency whose relationship hinges on the privacy the black bag offers. The company’s clinical psychologist Zoe (Naomie Harris) and her field agent boyfriend James (Regé-Jean Page) are suspects too, as are the brilliant tech wunderkind Clarissa (Marisa Abela) and her older companion Freddie (Tom Burke). Each of the three couples has their ways of operating and communicating, and thus, their secrets to keep. “Not every spy is to your flavor of monogamy,” Kathryn tells George when he organizes a dinner party to begin sniffing out the mole under false pretenses. Maybe so, but perhaps they’ll enjoy George’s truth serum-spiked chana masala instead?

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This group dinner, which occurs early in the film, is the perfect opportunity for Koepp to highlight each character’s eccentricities and for Soderbergh to capture how his actors play them in front of the camera. Around the table, viewers are asked to study the dynamics between each couple closely and pay special attention to how characters interact with those outside of their romantic relationship. When Clarissa lobs a flirtatious invitation across the table to George, asking when she’ll get to take his renowned polygraph test, Soderbergh, Koepp and Abela are all working at the top of their games. Soderbergh lingers on Abela’s smirk, letting his audience wonder if she knows what George is up to; Koepp’s dialogue supplies the character with a spy’s intuition that belies the greenness of Clarissa’s age; and Abela delivers her question with a sparkle in her eye that exudes sex as much as it suggests danger.

Sex is a critical tool for Soderbergh to call on in “Black Bag,” but not necessarily in the most expected way. Characters don’t screw so much as they screw each other over, but even their betrayals carry a degree of certitude that negates mere sensuality. These people know what they want, in and out of the bedroom, and they’re equipped with the tools to make those desires a reality. In this group of six, being boring falls just below treason on the list of unforgivable offenses. These characters don’t mince words, and Koepp’s dialogue reflects their conviction. When one person gets a knife stabbed through their hand, they aim for an equally cutting response to their assailant: “That’s the most boring thing you’ve ever done.”

For all of the high-tech spy gear and hidden motives, “Black Bag” is at its most electrifying when it claws at the drab plot points of your average marriage drama. It’s harder for audiences to approach spousal duplicity with a shrug when thousands of lives are at stake. But the film doesn’t simply evaluate the constraints of monogamy — you’d rarely find a plot point so trite in a Soderbergh film. Instead, “Black Bag” considers what keeps a loving, monogamous relationship healthy when temptation is waiting around every corner. Kathryn and George don’t see their fidelity as a hindrance, but rather a challenge. What constitutes spice when you’re both in a line of work where spice is the primary flavor? 

Michael Fassbender in “Black Bag” (Courtesy of Focus Features and Universal Pictures)

This question brilliantly sets up a short yet memorable scene where George and Kathryn enjoy a movie at their local multiplex. After finding a ticket stub in the garbage can, George asks Kathryn out to the same movie listed on the ticket to study her reaction, suspecting that she might’ve used the theater as a meeting place to trade government intel. We don’t know until the end of the film whether Kathryn is lying about not having seen the movie already, but at that moment, she’s having a fantastic time with her husband, causing George to settle into bliss too. As it turns out, even when partners lie and kill for a living, something as simple as a date night can be enough to invigorate a marriage. 

“Black Bag” has no shortage of notable moments like these, many of which end up in the hands of Abela, who is far and away the film’s scene-stealer — a lofty task as one-sixth of the finest ensemble cast in any movie so far this year. Abela more than makes up for her dismal turn as Amy Winehouse in the catastrophic biopic that was last spring’s “Back to Black,” and her work here is further proof that every great actor needs a couple of stinkers under their belt for audiences to really appreciate when they shine onscreen. Except in Soderbergh’s film, Abela doesn’t just shine, she often eclipses her far more seasoned castmates, knocking one-liners out of the park with such effortless aplomb that her performance feels like watching a movie star being born in real-time. Anyone who’s seen Abela’s work in HBO’s excellent finance drama “Industry” — which, in my opinion, topples “Succession” —  knows she has the varied skillset of any great actor. But in “Black Bag,” she takes off with the whole bloody affair, and it’s a delight to watch as she navigates Soderbergh’s expertly built tension with ease.

Then again, the entire thing is a jewel, an espionage romp that’s so consistently enjoyable throughout its snappy 94-minute runtime that you’ll want to buy another ticket the moment you walk out of the theater. Soderbergh’s sleek direction pours over the viewer like smooth espresso and energizes just as much too. “Black Bag” is a lean, mean spy machine. Good luck keeping it a secret, you’ll be talking about it all year long.