Bubble

Scott Hardie: “It ruled.”

Steven Soderbergh's explicit experiments with Bubble were whether a film released simultaneously in theaters, on cable TV, and on DVD could be successful (it was), and whether a film shot on real locations using only non-actors and no scripts could work (it did). However, his implicit experiment was even more interesting: Could a story told with the scarcest of details still manage to entertain? Yes, in the form of a pleasant hypnotic trance induced by watching these ordinary people go about their mundane lives with just enough dots connected for it to mean something. It's the unfulfilled promise of reality TV, the opportunity to watch the quiet milieu of everyday life, and you can't turn away from it. There is a plot, and some creepy imagery courtesy of the baby dolls in various stages of completion at the factory where the characters work, but the focus here is on the timbre of ordinary life and how it feels when something happens to you that's only supposed to happen in the movies.

− March 18, 2007 • more by Scott • log in or register to reply