Bubble [HD DVD]

Bubble [HD DVD] Review

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"I am doll parts, bad skin, doll heart...And someday you will ache like I ache" - Courtney Love

"Bubble" concerns three employees in a small doll factory in a small mid-west town. Co-workers Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) and Kyle (Dustin Ashley) have known each other for awhile. Martha is overweight and fortyish, looking like a less comedic Roseanne Barr; Kyle is in his early 20s, still lives at home, and is fairly emo. They seem like an unlikely pair, but it's mostly a friendship born of convenience working and commuting together to the doll factory. They are not happy people; they're struggling to pay their bills and rarely smile. Martha also seems fonder of Kyle than he is of her. In one painful scene, Martha and Kyle stop for breakfast, and Martha says that she wants a picture of Kyle because he's her best friend. One senses that this friendship will probably not end well. Speeding things along is their new co-worker, Rose (Misty Wilkins). She has a two-year-old daughter and, as soon as she befriends Martha and Kyle, makes Martha feel like a third wheel. Ruh-roh!

The movie made news in 2006 by being nearly simultaneously released in theaters, on cable, and on DVD. Many critics wrote it off a digital stunt, but it's worth a look. Steven Soderbergh has long been one of the most experimental of the major American movie directors. In particular, he has specialized in incorporating handheld video equipment into his movies (see "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" and "Full Frontal"). Here, he takes the next logical step by making a truly minimalist film - shot on digital tape, with non-professional actors and a mostly improvised script. The movie is slow-moving and self-conscious, but it also captures a realness not seen in most films. It also shows a side of America not often focused on - average people living average, boring lives. There's nothing inherently interesting about them, but somehow the film makes their mini-psychodrama something greater and deeper.

Bubble [HD DVD] Feature

Bubble [HD DVD] Overview

As an audacious experiment in the art and distribution of motion pictures, Bubble is a twofold triumph. Released on DVD a mere four days after its U.S. theatrical release (in only 32 theaters) in January 2006, this ultra-low-key drama was the first of six films by maverick director Steven Soderbergh (produced in partnership with HDNet Films and 2929 Entertainment, founded by Internet pioneers Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner) to be released simultaneously in theaters, on DVD, and HDNet cable TV, effectively closing the traditional "window" between theatrical and home-video release platforms, and causing many theater owners to boycott the film in protest over its groundbreaking strategy. To accommodate this paradigm-shifting milestone, Soderbergh and Full Frontal screenwriter Coleman Hough reunited to craft a working-class murder mystery that's perfectly suited to its experimental purpose: Quickly shot on high definition video, it's a riveting 72-minute exercise in minimal style, located in the depressed border town of Belpre, Ohio, and employing non-actors from the region who played an active role in creating their mundane everyday dialogue.

Chubby, middle-aged Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) and twenty-something slacker Kyle (Dustin James Ashley) work in a drab doll factory, molding and assembling rubber doll parts, passing dreary lunch-hours with small talk and clinging to modest dreams that will never come true. When an attractive single mother named Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins) is hired as a temporary employee, Martha's secretly possessive affection for Kyle is silently challenged, leading to an act of violence that obliterates their daily routine. In dramatizing this passive love triangle, Soderbergh (serving, under pseudonyms, as his own cinematographer and editor) emphasizes the stilted, soul-crushing rhythms of lives that have been stunted by loneliness and isolation; they live in a bubble, as it were, and Bubble is arresting in its visual precision, finding unexpected beauty in physical and emotional bleakness. Obviously not the kind of film that draws a blockbuster audience, Bubble exists on its own terms, capable of captivating a receptive audience, regardless of format or context, without losing its experimental edge. DVD extras include a video introduction by Soderbergh, the original casting interviews with the film's non-professional actors, and more. --Jeff Shannon

Bubble [HD DVD] Specifications

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Jan 10, 2010 03:55:04

Fascinating, but goes nowhere - E. K. Byham - Northern New Jersey, USA
This is a MUCH better film than some of the reviews would have you believe. It is a fascinating look at an element of American society that is virtually ignored by the movies. And that it is done by non-professionals and largely ad-libbed makes it quite remarkable. The editing is outstanding and the movie is never boring. The only problem is the ending, which is simultaneously over dramatic and totally lacking in drama. I think it will provide valuable insights into life in America at this time for future generations.


"I don't know, Martha." - J from NY - New York
Soderbergh's "Bubble" is definitely one of his less ambitious ventures, but still provides a thought provoking experience. Using non-professional actors in a remote, impoverished small town in Ohio, Soderbergh is not unlike Gus Van Sant in being able to make a big something out of a big nothing.

Martha, an obese redheaded woman who works at a doll making factory with a mighty strange young co-worker named Kyle, has a very lonely and unfulfilling life. She has a generous heart and takes care of her elderly father while working constantly. Her attraction to Kyle is apparent from the first scene, perhaps because he is a good listener; aside from working and smoking weed, he does and says very little. We discover later on that Kyle suffers from panic attacks and was forced to drop out of high school because of them. Both are vulnerable, banal, good people, which makes the events later in the film even more tragic.

Rose, a seemingly ordinary and attractive young woman, comes to work with the two of them. This is when Martha's deeply, deeply repressed rage begins to surface in very quiet ways. As she sits in a Baptist church, a light begins to shine on her face, a bluish hue, and suddenly the church is abandoned and she is all alone. Kyle and Rose start to flirt a little. The film's "main event" happens so quickly and with such a mysteriously ordinary logic that it leaves one in a momentary state of shock. The most sympathetic character is the most monstrous one, and it is hard to swallow while being entirely believable. The question Soderbergh fails to answer and that is most important is: is the "villain" responsible or not responsible for what she's done?

I think Soderbergh called it "Bubble" because everything takes place in such a non-dramatic, non-descript way, and the quality of the character's lives are very low. Even out of this melancholy framework, though, an act of passion can emerge. A chilling and memorable movie.