Bursting Bubble

BUBBLE

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Reviewing Roberto Rossellini's 1946 Italian Neorealist film Open City-which was shot documentary-style in recently-Axis-occupied Rome, and acted by a mixed cast of professional actors and amateurs-the great critic James Agee assessed the films' rough energy in terms that could apply to any such film produced in any country, in any decade. Open City, Agee wrote, lacked "the depth of characterization, thought and feeling which might have made a definitively great film." But he allowed that "the film's finest overall quality" was its "immediacy?Everything in it had been recently lived through; much of it is straight re-enactment on or near the actual spot; its whole spirit is still, scarcely cooled at all, the exalted spirit of the actual experience." Never for a second would I suggest that Steven Soderbergh's American Neorealist picture Bubble-a shot-on-video microdrama about factory workers, produced in small town West Virginia, starring nonprofessional actors-is the equal of Open City. Like a lot of Soderbergh's recent work, this one is a loose-limbed but fairly theoretical filmmaking experiment; as such, it's more interesting to talk about than to sit through. Yet Agee's spot-on description of Open City still came to mind as I watched it, because for a number of reasons-including a non-war-torn, purposefully dull domestic setting and Soderbergh's customary air of detachment-the movie ends up reinventing the wheel (the indie- and undie-film world is thick with movies featuring non-professionals, including Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha Ha), and illustrating Neorealism's pitfalls rather than its virtues. Bubble-which was written by Cameron Hough, who wrote Soderbergh's half-assed Hollywood satire Full Frontal-is much better than it had any right to be, yet still unsatisfying. And while the Neorealism booster in me hates to admit this, the nonprofessional actors are a big part of the problem.

That's not to say that they're awful: quite the contrary. Computer programmer Dustin James Ashley, who plays the laid-back, pot-smoking factory worker Kyle, is charmingly unaffected; hairstylist Misty Dawn Wilkins, who plays the lovely young single mom Rose, Kyle's coworker and future squeeze, has an easygoing flirtiness that's just right; and Debbie Doebereiner, who plays Martha, Kyle's colleague and surrogate mom, is sweet but flinty. (Watch her wary face as she reacts to Rose's shameless flirting with Kyle; her thoughts are so clear that you could write them out in subtitles.)

But not screwing up isn't the same thing as giving a great performance, and the sad fact is, Soderbergh's non-pros don't do anything that a professional-or a rougher but more exuberant nonprofessional-couldn't have done with a lot more flair. Watching Bubble is not at all like watching a circa-'90s film from Denmark, Belgium or Iran (whose film industry fused documentary and dramatic conventions as never before, and raised nonprofessional acting to an unparalleled level of excellence) because it doesn't have the solidity that comes from working out of an established national tradition. Nor is it like watching Bujalski's films or Andrew Wagner's The Talent Given Us, films whose nonprofessional casts are so eccentric, so vital, that you engage with them as people and rarely get distracted by their lack of polish. Even though Bubble is projected as the first film in a series of films on contemporary American life-presumably like Lars von Trier's American trilogy, only small, outwardly nonpolitical and presumably not condescending and shitty-it feels like a one-off, unmoored and somehow unsure of itself, even though Soderbergh's cool blue cinematography and lovely wide shots suggest otherwise.

Worse, as in Gus van Sant's Elephant, I spent a good part of Bubble's 78-minute running time being impressed by how unaffected and sometimes fascinating the amateurs are, but still realizing that this admiration meant that I was standing outside of the movie rather than entering its world and staying there. Good as the non-pros could be, there wasn't a minute when I didn't wish I was watching real actors, hardened pros who were skilled enough, perhaps bold enough, to grapple directly with Hough's script and Soderbergh's filmmaking and squeeze the pop art out of it, or at least provoke a reaction beyond, "Hey, those amateur actors aren't half-bad." Without divulging a crucial-and, to my mind, unmotivated and totally unbelievable-plot twist, I can tell you that when the film's Big Dramatic Moment arrives, it doesn't have anywhere near the jolting effect it ought to have. In fact, the moment underlines the non-professionals' weaknesses emphatically, because it demands a raw, messy yet 100 percent credible reaction, a finely-tuned disgorgement of dark feeling that professionals spend their lives learning how to play. Asking non-professionals, who are mainly concerned with not embarrassing themselves, to play this sort of material strikes me as unwise and maybe unfair; it's like asking a green pianist to play Chopin when he's still mastering scales.

In every scene, you understand and appreciate what Soderbergh is going for-a film that proves that drama connected to daily life can be powerful even if performed by non-professionals-and you may admire the rigor with which he pursues his goal. Unlike many of Soderbergh's other attempts to blur fiction and documentary, notably Full Frontal and the HBO series K Street, Soderbergh isn't covering the action with multiple handheld cameras and hoping he gets what he needs. The compositions and camera moves are much more meticulously thought-out here-mostly static shots and slow pans, which situate the characters in their almost-post-industrial landscape, and conjure a feeling of mournful gravity. Soderbergh's deep affinity for blue-collar people-a rarely remarked-upon aspect of his talent, last seen in the formulaic but gritty Erin Brokovich-is showcased here to impressive effect. These characters live from paycheck to paycheck and hammer out important subjects in fluorescent-lit break rooms; their offhand conversations about bonuses, overtime, savings and medical bills remind us that there's a whole world of real anxiety out there that American films rarely deign to depict. The wide shots of the doll and shovel factories where the main characters work are unsentimentally revealing, and some of the close-ups of Kyle and Martha making baby doll parts are close to brilliant; without making a big deal of it, Soderbergh reminds us that, sociologically speaking, these people are as much assembly-line products as the toys they manufacture.

Soderbergh even attempts a few striking, definitely non-Neorealist effects, isolating a key character with a theatrical spotlight and letting the camera just sit there watching her think in close-up. (This device reminded me of two great scenes from Vincent Gallo's Buffalo 66-Christina Ricci's bowling alley dance and Ben Gazzara's lip-synch crooning, both spotlit like dreamtime solo numbers.) But the movie's good qualities don't add up to a great movie. Bubble is just good enough to make you wish it were better, just controlled enough to make you wish it were more polished and just confident enough to make you wish it were bold. Its contrived amateurishness ends up being an advertisement for professionalism, which surely couldn't have been the point.