When Steven Soderbergh publicly retired back in 2013, the filmmaker behind movies including Sex, Lies & Videotape, Ocean’s Eleven and Erin Brockovich warned us: “The problem is that cinema as I define it, and as something that inspired me, is under assault by the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience.” He was right – too often now it feels as if we’ve all crowded around, morbidly curious, to watch cinema’s last, ragged breaths.
He then unretired, almost immediately. But this wasn’t a late-night text to a just-dumped ex, this was a return on new, concreted terms, the kind you’d wish every great director could indulge in. Soderbergh, now, exclusively makes films fuelled by the joy of making films. They prod at the form. They remain curious, even in their failures. His latest, Presence, shares a fair amount in common with Unsane (2018) and Kimi (2022) – clean, simple premises tied primarily to a single location, yet giddy with possibility.
