Extreme Close-Up

The idle fantasies provoked by watching a pretty girl become rather more concrete for a young TV reporter (McMullan), conducting a series on invasion of privacy ('Privacy is not clearly a legal right'), when he gets his hands on the latest bugging devices. From lazily scanning the block opposite, through some more dedicated spying, his voyeurism culminates with a self-appraisal in the mirror while his wife reaches orgasm beneath him. Because the central character is given little motivation (he's ordinary, personable, reasonably married), the audience is forced into an examination of its own condoning of the voyeur's actions. Unfortunately, with the sex scenes so routinely softcore, this investigation doesn't necessarily go very deep. As scripted by Michael Crichton, however, the pitfalls of peeping are well accounted for: the fear of being found out, the mixture of fear and elation, and above all, the lengths to which people are prepared to go. As our reporter says on TV, 'If someone wants to spy badly enough, he'll find a way to do it.' Even if it means squatting behind a tree in the pitch black with an infra-red scanner.