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Preview by Jack Foley |
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AS ALL eyes look to the 2003 Sundance Film Festival (the line-up has just
been announced), we have decided to focus on another of last year's festival
favourites, Personal Velocity - a film which took Grand Jury Prize in 2002
and which opened in America this weekend (Dec 6-9) to rave reviews.
Writer director, Rebecca Miller, has adapted a trio of short stories from
her 2001 collection and turned them into one of the year's must-see films
of the year (States-side), all of which focus on women and their trials and
tribulations.
The three women in question are portrayed by indie favourites, Parker Posey,
Kyra Sedgwick and Fairuza Balk and all are said to be in mercurial form in
front of the camera.
Sedgwick plays Delia, a gutsy, yet scarred, working-class housewife who takes
off with her children to escape her violent husband, while Posey stars as
Greta, a Manhattan cookbook editor, whose suppressed hunger for something
more is expressed in casual infidelity. And finally, there's Balk, as Paula,
'a tormented punkette', who takes off with a hitchhiker and heads to New York
City.
All three have reached turning points in their lives and all three are about
to rebel, in order to escape the tragedy which has befallen them, in various
ways.
For Miller, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and wife of actor Daniel
Day-Lewis, the acclaim the film has attracted is just reward for the effort
that was put into making it. The 40-year-old mother-of-two shot Personal Velocity
quickly, on a digital-video shoestring, yet still managed to win both the
Sundance Grand Jury Prize for drama and the award for excellence
in cinematography - no mean achievement, given the calibre of film it was
up against.
According to Posey, the movie features 'three different women all going through
changes'. Yet she doesn't know where she has seen that before, 'other than
in European movies'.
"The film has no problem showing women who are passionate, and [it] doesn't
judge," she told Entertainment Weekly, one of its biggest fans (see below).
But it is a point that Miller concurs with, as she told the magazine: "It
[the movie] probably has a different expression of sexuality than most. I
didn't try to conform to any idea of what's romantic or what's sexy. In Delia's
case, I was interested in the whole idea of the slut personality. Everyone
always thinks these women are used by men, but what about the woman who's
also using men and gets pleasure from it? The idea that women only want love
and to be faithful is a fiction that's handy for men."
Miller, who previously studied painting at Yale University, before embarking
on a brief career as an actress (appearing in films such as Regarding Henry
and Consenting Adults), maintains she set out to 'give the viewer a kind of
feast - a film that's beautiful to look at, that's funny and sad, and about
real people'.
She maintains that, despite dealing with difficult issues, it's an 'extremely
positive film', which does not fall prone to contradictory elements.
"In movies, there's a desire to simplify for the sake of the message,"
she added. "I didn't worry about the message. It's whatever you want
to bring home with you."
Critics have obviously found plenty, while the film looks set to develop a
huge indie following both in the States and when it opens in the Uk next year.
What the US critics said...
Entertainment
Weekly gets the ball rolling by awarding the movie an A and raving: "Just
because a movie is delicate and humane doesn't mean it's not an adventure.
In Personal Velocity, the writer-director Rebecca Miller, adapting a trio
of short stories from her 2001 collection, creates portraits of three highly
distinct women, and virtually every second we spend with them tingles with
discovery." It is a sentiment that is pretty much echoed by all critics.
E! Online stated that, 'so what if the resolutions aren't always satisfying
— they obviously aren't meant to be', before awarding it a solid B+,
while Film Threat referred to it as 'intensely moving and oftentimes haunting'.
The New York Times predicted that 'Ms Miller's thoughtful, vibrating sensibility
will also provoke discussions afterward', while the New York Post referred
to it, merely, as an 'intelligent chick flick' and awarded it three out of
four.
Reel Views felt that 'the acting is uniformly excellent', while TV Guide described
it as 'a trio of tightly focused, beautifully acted half-hour films'.
Of the negative reviews, The Onion's A.V. Club was perhaps the most scathing,
describing it as 'a watershed of feminist clichés', while Village Voice
felt that 'the stories lean toward self-importance'.
But the majority felt it was a terrific little film, which fully merited the
awards it took at Sundance. People, for instance, went as far as to say that
it is 'worth sharing', while FilmCritic.com felt that it was 'simply, a refreshing
character study about choice'. Film Journal International went one step further,
describing it as a 'chick flick that transcends its genre'.
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