[WARNING-SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD]
Writer/director Rebecca Miller in "Personal Velocity" creates an absorbing pastiche of vignettes showing the lives, in microcosm and macro-crisis, of three women. A Varick Street (Manhattan) shooting followed by a car crash is a veiled element joining the lives of the women who do not know each other. Two hear of the incident on the news while the third is involved. Its significance is less than some have found but it does create a time contextuality that insures seeing the three as occupants of a wide but interrelated world.
Kyra Sedgwick is Delia, a mother of three with a past of rampant promiscuity and a present of painful-to-watch extreme domestic abuse at the hands of her husband. Fleeing, she takes refuge with a high school classmate whose generosity she accepts but can't acknowledge. Delia is a picture of impotent, mounting rage. She loves her children but does she have a clue how to move beyond the day-to-day existence in which she's hiding?
As Greta, Parker Posey inhabits a role that must be second-nature to her: witty, an ambitious, cuttingly sharp Manhattan intellectual. She's a book editor but not the shallow ditzy one from "You've Got Mail." Torn between love for her adoring husband and a drive to move on professionally without knowing, really, why she's so motivated, Greta wallows in self-pity and self-love in more or less equal quantities.
In the last vignette, Fairuza Balk as Paula gives a powerful performance as a young, pregnant unmarried woman who flees Manhattan and her boyfriend to an unsatisfactory visit with her mother and her very dislikable new boyfriend. A chance encounter with a truly disturbed, and probably dangerous, young man gives her pause and leads to some reflection and, as I saw it, growth. Paula may be the one woman of the trio who leaves the viewer believing things are going to work out for her.
The title, "Personal Velocity," comes from the segment with Greta when her successful lawyer father remarks that his daughter has always had her own velocity. But measuring velocity by itself yields little information of value unless trajectory can also be assessed. The women moves with a certain force and speed but where is each going? Is there a target? Can an end destination be discerned? The success of Miller's storytelling is the inescapable invitation to imagine the trajectory for each of these characters.
Rebecca Miller manages to tell three very different tales without judgment. The viewer can speculate about right and wrong and possible resolutions. And the very fine performances insure that such thoughts will occupy most who see this film long after leaving the theater.
Miller, the daughter of Arthur Miller, based the script on her book of the same title. I haven't read it but now plan to do so.
The movie was produced using digital technology and it shows. While some feel that the raw and slightly foggy and unfocused screen adds to the dramatic intensity I found it distracting as is the overuse of handheld cameras. Someone prone to motion sickness might just feel a bit queasy at points here.
The three women could never be together as friends yet Miller has crafted and her actors have projected an underlying universality of women's experiences.
7/10.
Writer/director Rebecca Miller in "Personal Velocity" creates an absorbing pastiche of vignettes showing the lives, in microcosm and macro-crisis, of three women. A Varick Street (Manhattan) shooting followed by a car crash is a veiled element joining the lives of the women who do not know each other. Two hear of the incident on the news while the third is involved. Its significance is less than some have found but it does create a time contextuality that insures seeing the three as occupants of a wide but interrelated world.
Kyra Sedgwick is Delia, a mother of three with a past of rampant promiscuity and a present of painful-to-watch extreme domestic abuse at the hands of her husband. Fleeing, she takes refuge with a high school classmate whose generosity she accepts but can't acknowledge. Delia is a picture of impotent, mounting rage. She loves her children but does she have a clue how to move beyond the day-to-day existence in which she's hiding?
As Greta, Parker Posey inhabits a role that must be second-nature to her: witty, an ambitious, cuttingly sharp Manhattan intellectual. She's a book editor but not the shallow ditzy one from "You've Got Mail." Torn between love for her adoring husband and a drive to move on professionally without knowing, really, why she's so motivated, Greta wallows in self-pity and self-love in more or less equal quantities.
In the last vignette, Fairuza Balk as Paula gives a powerful performance as a young, pregnant unmarried woman who flees Manhattan and her boyfriend to an unsatisfactory visit with her mother and her very dislikable new boyfriend. A chance encounter with a truly disturbed, and probably dangerous, young man gives her pause and leads to some reflection and, as I saw it, growth. Paula may be the one woman of the trio who leaves the viewer believing things are going to work out for her.
The title, "Personal Velocity," comes from the segment with Greta when her successful lawyer father remarks that his daughter has always had her own velocity. But measuring velocity by itself yields little information of value unless trajectory can also be assessed. The women moves with a certain force and speed but where is each going? Is there a target? Can an end destination be discerned? The success of Miller's storytelling is the inescapable invitation to imagine the trajectory for each of these characters.
Rebecca Miller manages to tell three very different tales without judgment. The viewer can speculate about right and wrong and possible resolutions. And the very fine performances insure that such thoughts will occupy most who see this film long after leaving the theater.
Miller, the daughter of Arthur Miller, based the script on her book of the same title. I haven't read it but now plan to do so.
The movie was produced using digital technology and it shows. While some feel that the raw and slightly foggy and unfocused screen adds to the dramatic intensity I found it distracting as is the overuse of handheld cameras. Someone prone to motion sickness might just feel a bit queasy at points here.
The three women could never be together as friends yet Miller has crafted and her actors have projected an underlying universality of women's experiences.
7/10.