Yes, this is Indie week for me. Bubble is an early Steven
Soderbergh (Magic Mike) crime drama mystery film about three people trying to carve out
lives in a small “crumbling” Ohio town.
Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) takes care of her ailing father.
After setting him up for the day, she goes off to work a dead-end job putting
dolls together. She paints them, wigs them, and even spends her evenings sewing
clothes for them. Her “best friend” is much younger. Kyle (Dustin James Ashley)
pulls the doll parts out of the molds. He has no bank account, rarely dates,
and lives in one room at his mother’s house. Martha gives him rides to work
every day, and even takes him to his second job when he asks. The lives of the
two are going nowhere, although Martha has dreams of going on vacation to Aruba.
When Rose (Misty Wilkins), a rather mousy single-mother is hired at the company
to paint the dolls also, Martha’s world begins to crumble.
Rose is a user. She begins asking Martha for favors. She
asks Rose to pick her up at a job where she is supposed to be cleaning a woman’s
house. Martha finds her enjoying a bubble bath in the woman’s bathroom. Rose
asks Martha to babysit so she can go on a date. Martha agrees but is devastated to see that
Rose’s date is Kyle. While Rose and Kyle are on their date, they go back to his
house where Rose steals money from his dresser. When Kyle drops her off, Rose’s
ex-boyfriend, father of her child, comes and argues with Rose about stealing
money from him. The next day Rose is discovered murdered and the movie works
toward solving the case.
The actors are all amateurs and often it shows. The dialog
is mostly improvised. While the line
delivery is often halting and stilted, one reviewer on IMDB has pointed out how that
the captures the sense of “repressed
emotions, due to constant care-taking of others, spending most of your time and
energy just getting by, working in monotonous jobs, working all the time, not
working at all, just surviving, just getting by.” Filming on
location their characters’ homes are the actor’s real homes.
The film takes
time to develop the characters and help us understand their lives. One of the
best things the film does is the sense of documentation of real workers doing
real jobs. There are memorable shots of the dolls in various stages, appearing like silent Greek choruses to the low-key drama being played out. We leave the film identifying with the monotony Martha and Kyle face every day in lives without
futures.
Bubble (2005) ****
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