Black Bag is a sexy spy thriller from exceptional, unpredictable filmmaker Steven Soderbergh

There’s an innate pleasure to diving into a Steven Soderbergh film. Prolific and unpredictable, Soderbergh remains the last true experimenter working within the mainstream American system. In just a few short months, he’s able to deliver a ghost story told from the point of view of the phantom with Presence, and also a spy thriller that doubles as a metaphor for marriage with Black Bag. 

Black Bag stars Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as a married couple who both work for a British spy agency. The title refers to jobs that must remain secret, even to each other. The “black bag” jobs, though, present an obvious conundrum for marital intimacy and honesty, particularly as George (Fassbender) begins to suspect that his wife Kathryn is not only lying to him, but potentially working to betray the country. 

In a clever screenplay by David Koepp, which plays off Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the movie quickly turns into an unconventional dinner party. The very precise George serves dinner, while the more aloof Kathryn entertains. As the three couples sit around the table, George suggests a little game. Everyone seated at the table should make a resolution for the person sitting to their right. As one can imagine, the simple parlour game quickly devolves into petty grievances and outright violence.

The Albee connection remains relatively strong throughout Black Bag, as it strengthens the film’s examination of modern relationships. What are the limits of honesty? How do people stay together in high-competition and inherently deceptive fields? The answer, unsurprisingly, seems to be that they have to be real sickos, in it for the love of the game. The paranoid inklings driving George isn’t just mad love, but a pride in his work.

In some ways, the film is counterintuitive to a lot of contemporary messaging, positioning marriage as one of the greatest pillars of devotion and morality within society. As the other couples crumble due to a lack of loyalty and competing values, our central relationship remains strong. The dedication George and Kathryn have to each other sustains more than their marriage, extending to the nation itself. Their intimate knowledge of their partner’s habits and shared willingness to kill for each other doesn’t inspire mopey depression in the face of betrayal, but a desire to dive deeper, to get at the truth — or, at least, a version of it. 

Rather than leaning towards a conservative vision of marriage as a pillar of a healthy society, however, the screenplay goes out of its way to show how to refuse traditionalism. Aside from the fact that the couple has decided not to have children, the film also presents their devotion to each other as bordering on self-destructive. It’s not necessarily aspirational either, as the other couples look at them with varying levels of admiration and repulsion. The intensity of their connection isn’t pure or beautiful, but brutally obsessive. It doesn’t matter that both of them embody a quiet serenity in their demeanour; their love is all-consuming.

The intricacies of the actual spy story are always less interesting than the cat and mouse games of the various relationships. It’s clear that Soderbergh is far less interested in the geopolitical dramas than the interpersonal ones, which means that even scenes meant to hinge on suspense are not especially effective. While more than capable of creating a film with twists and thrills, Black Bag doesn’t quite work on that level, though the strength of the film’s marital inquiries and the cast help overcome its narrative weaknesses. 

At a brisk 90 minutes, Black Bag remains pleasurable. It’s middle of the road Soderbergh, which still ranks as better than most films. It also strikes me as a film that only improves with rewatches, as its detail-oriented plot and characters reveal more of themselves with careful observation. Aside from Blanchett and Fassbender, the rest of the cast — Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page and Pierce Brosnan — go all in. It’s a simple but effective film that’s a throwback to an era where films for adults could be sexy, fun and a little twisted. ■

Black Bag opens in Montreal theatres on Friday, March 14.

---

For our latest in film and TV, please visit our Film & TV section.