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PERSONAL VELOCITY Send This Review to a Friend
The rare short story film form is smartly and beautifully resurrected by writer-director Rebecca Miller in "Personal Velocity," based on her book of the same title, with three stories about three women, all depicted as arriving at a moment when their lives can take a decisive turn. The film was showcased at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival. With excellent casting and fulfilling performances, this is a film that comments complexly on what different women may face in our society. It succeeds by means of drama, not polemic.
The separate stories are linked specifically only by broadcast of a shooting and resulting accident that two of the women hear reported and a third is close to. Otherwise, it is the overall theme of impending change that glues the film together. John Ventimiglia crisply narrates, which is not only a means of advancing the stories but captures Miller's skill with words and writing style in a way that adhering only to dialogue would not.
The first story concerns Delia, wonderfully portrayed by Kyra Sedgwick, who, having grown up in New York's Catskill area, comes from a household of abuse, learns to use sex as a means of power early on, and eventually marries a man who abuses her and kills her love. She has two children, and after a brutal attack she flees with her son and daughter, first to a shelter and then to the home of a school acquaintance. Sedgwick's performance astutely touches many bases--longing, pain, indecision, resentment and defense of her dignity included. The way she finally handles a moment in which she suddenly seems sure of herself is surprising and candid in its explicitness. This time her use of sex as empowerment in a weird incident leaves her in mental and emotional control and we get the feeling that she can move on constructively.
The second tale involves Greta, with Parker Posey giving an especially fine performance, the best that I have seen her deliver. We get the picture of an achiever, a cookbook editor who gets a sudden break editing the work of a hot fiction writer named Thavi Matola, portrayed seductively by Joel De La Fuente. Greta has settled into a marriage with Lee, pleasantly played by Tim Guinee, but her success and restlessness has led to boredom at home. In addition, Greta is resentful of her lawyer father (Ron Leibman) who has dumped her mother, married another woman and has shattered her idealization of him. Miller keeps her sense of humor handy, and includes a funny retrospective episode of Greta's infidelity as a final escapade before her wedding. What will be Greta's trajectory of personal velocity?
In the final story, Paula (Fairuza Balk) has been living with a man and has learned to her alarm that she is pregnant. A terrible street accident (the connecting tissue) sends her driving off in emotional turmoil. She could have easily been killed. En route she picks up Kevin, a hitchhiker (Lou Taylor Pucci), who is sullen and reticent. She discovers that he has been the victim of abuse, and this arouses her nurturing instincts, and her attitude is also due for a change. Balk is exceedingly good in building her portrait of Paula, and Miller has made this episode the most ultimately optimistic of the three. Ellen Kuras's cinematography is outstanding in every story and the film is helped by savvy use of a range of music.
There is an impressive back-story to this film, which won the Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. It was shot digitally in 16 days with nearly 40 locations. This production achievement indicates what can be done with digital filmmaking. But there is nothing experimental about "Personal Velocity." It is a solidly professional work that is profound, moving, spirited and entertaining. It certainly bodes well for Miller's future as a filmmaker. (One might be interested to know that she is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller.) A United Artists release.
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