Personal Velocity | Review

Characters are not as interesting as they probably are in print.

Here’s something you don’t see too often, author writes a book of short stories, transfers it into a screenplay and then goes on to direct the film in the indie spirit and claims the top prize at Sundance. Personal Velocity: Three Portraits comes from the brainchild of Rebecca Miller who gives us a film that is very much an all feminine point of view.

Separated into three episodes, we have Delia (Kyra Sedgwick-Just A Kiss) a tough cookie who is a desperate mother looking to get away from an abusive relationship and trying to get a new start in life. The girl with the blue jean attitude is a fighter. In the second and more entertaining tale, Greta (Parker Posey-Best in Show) comes from a good background with many privileges, one day her fate changes-but the voice in her head tells her that she needs to change some other things in her life. A lifetime of seeking her father’s approval leads her to having relationship problems with other men. The third story contains some of the same type of urgent energy as the first tale with a former runaway, who runs away from her problems (Fairuza Balk-American History X) is a young adult who once left home and is now leaving the embrace of her adoptive home to find her way back to her original safe house for some time to think and be consoled. Along the way she picks up a young teen running away from home and then she ponders on his and her future-literally bringing back a child with her.

Miller explores themes of women struggling with identity, women struggling in their relationships with men and other male figures. The personas are all deeply afflicted by their dilemmas and the rate of chaos adds to the visual tension on the screen. Where as the other two have a lot to say about living a life-filled with trauma, Posey’s character is more subdued in nature and comes off as the most interesting of the stories. The problem that comes with the short story format is that you sometimes don’t get enough of the character descriptions or that you just can’t get enough of them. Miller uses the flashback form within the narrative to give quick bios, but this mixed with a digital photography just doesn’t deepen the solitudes and pain of the characters. There is also a bad choice in back-ground music that sounds like a music box of sorts and a terrible choice in narration with a voiceover that is sort of along the lines of those audio book cassettes.

If you can bypass the monetized narration and shakily driven digital image then you might be able to enjoy the full scope of Miller’s intimate treat, but for a film that shows plenty of emotion, there is a little too much of the “trimming of the fat” for the viewer to even get emotional. The appeal of Miller’s Personal Velocity is that it really gets into the character’s heads, and the performances by all three actresses give it a naturally raw appeal, but ultimately the lack of time makes it hard to be gripped into what looks to be a half-attempted gripping drama.

Rating 2 stars