Friday February 10, 2006 SGN.org |
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Volume 34 Issue 06 |
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Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
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Bubble is an odd little Soderbergh shoestring gem |
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| Bubble is an odd little Soderbergh shoestring gem | |
| by Derich Mantonela
- SGN A&E Writer
In its brief, predictably unremunerative, one-week stay at the Metro, Stephen Soderbergh's shot-on-a-budget-with-him-as-his-own-cameraman "Bubble" attracted good reviews but very few paying customers. The tale of three lonely small-town West Virginians, trying to eke out a living at long, dull labor amid a ruined economy, using actual nonprofessional locals in the lead roles, is a tiny masterpiece you WILL get a chance to see if you missed it here, because not only is it already being shown on cable TV, you can buy it at your local video store. What elevates "Bubble" above its bare-bones subject matter and minimalist production values are the unlikely effectiveness and genuine pathos of its no-name performances (non-performances? they seem so real), people so close to the bone in their long-suffering, affecting loneliness and lostness we feel a kinship with them, a universality of sadness, made all the more effective because these characters don't blame anyone or anything for it, perhaps not even God. When two of the three characters reach out to each other in a kind of muted, stunted love, the third is driven over an edge she'd been teetering on for much of her life. When you have nothing, and even that is about to be taken away, something can snap. So understated, matter-of-fact, and subtle is Soderbergh's portrait of these sad, wasted lives (with some of the most unforced, pedestrian, natural-sounding dialog in the history of the movies) that its effect on us isn't immediately perceived - yet it lingers, want it to or not. |
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