Deborah Lipp

Bubble (2005) 10/10
Martha (Debbie Doebereiner), fortyish, works in a doll factory and cares for her dad. Kyle (Dustin Ashley), twentyish, her co-worker and best friend, lives with his mom, works two jobs, and is saving for a car. Their routine is shaken when Rose (Misty Wilkins) is hired at the factory. Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

You’ve probably never seen a movie like Bubble. It is not “naturalistic,” the way, say, Dogme 95 is naturalistic. It is, instead, actually natural. While the film style is in some ways conventional (none of the “shakey-cam” that characterizes most attempts at realism), the “actors” and “script” are not. Soderbergh and screenwriter Coleman Hough went to Parkersburg, West Virginia with a script that was basically a plot outline, cast the movie entirely with locals, and let the actors’ conversations about their own lives work their way into both the written script and improvisation.

I don’t know why it works. It is slow, sometimes dull, and virtually actionless. There are resentments, meaningful looks, thefts, even a murder, yet the overwhelming feeling is of nothing happening. At the same time, there is a compelling sense that life is happening, that this is real in a way that “reality television” is not. Every moment, every silence, every awkward, empty conversation, feels like life happening. I was riveted.

In his wonderful review of Bubble, Roger Ebert says

The movie feels so real a hush falls upon the audience, and we are made aware of how much artifice there is conventional acting.

Indeed. Watching at home alone, I felt that hush. When Arthur came in and asked what I was watching, I told him it was fascinating and tried to explain. He said “Why is that fascinating?” But ten minutes later, he said “This is fascinating.”

Bubble shows us lives lived in the empty spaces between what it provides and fails to provide. Martha is sweet to a fault, Kyle is shy to a fault, Rose is self-centered. These are small flaws, not dramatic undoings. But watch how these simple flaws ravel and unravel in the space between these people.

Three actors who have never acted before (or since, so far). (The secondary players are also locals with no acting experience to speak of.) They are amazing, perhaps both despite and because of their inexperience. They move through narrow lives. Martha is skilled at making dolls (and doll factories, let me tell you, are creepy places. Who knew?). Her work is not quite mindless, but it is repetitive. She has a nice car, suggesting that she is okay financially, but her life is lived mostly in front of the TV and the sewing machine, watching her father, feeding him, caring for him. Church exalts her, and then it’s back to work.

Again, this doesn’t sound like compelling film. My suggestion is simply to take my word for it and rent the movie.