Personal Velocity

On the surface, the new film Personal Velocity has quite a bit of pedigree about it. It was written and directed by Rebecca Miller, the daughter of author Arthur Miller, who has become an accomplished actress and author in her own right. In fact, Velocity is based on Ms. Miller novel of the same name. The film won the Cinematography and Grand Jury Awards at last year’s Sundance film festival. And it features three of the most interesting actresses to emerge from the last decade: Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, and Fairuza Balk. Bearing that in mind, it’s a shame to note that what looks so good on paper seems to fall short on the screen.

Velocity is made of portraits of three women at pivotal moments in their lives. After years of abuse from her husband who she desperately loves, tough and brassy Delia (Sedgwick) has decided to leave him and start over. For a woman like Delia, this prospect is not as easy as it seems. Greta (Posey) is a copy editor whose fire for ambition has dimmed since her parent’s divorce and her marriage. After years of editing cookbooks, Greta is offered a chance to edit for a famous author. Can she rekindle the fire within? Paula (Balk) is on the run after witnessing a hit and run accident. Pregnant and confused, she picks up a hitchhiker on her drive who makes things clearer for her.

For a film built on three stories, Miller seems to have a weakness for Greta’s story. It seems to last longer and delve deeper than the other stories. This is unfortunate since Greta’s situation would be one to which many people would be unable to relate. Greta’s success, and the manner in which she deals with it, might seems too foreign to some to be able to understand it. The other two segments seem to suffer because of this, especially Paula’s. While the first two installments have a narrator to guide us along, he appears only briefly in Paula’s segment, leaving the audience to fend for itself. This makes Ms. Balk work much harder than the other actresses to get her character’s feelings and motivations across.

On the plus side, all three actresses are uniformly excellent. While Ms. Balk and Ms. Posey work well in what would seem to be familiar territory for them, Ms. Sedgwick plays nicely against type as Delia. It’s a pleasant surprise from an actress whose best-known work has not allowed her to fully explore her range. And the cinematography, done with digital cameras rather than on film, does not distract the viewer the way it has in other works. But, for my tastes, the film does not spend enough time with these characters to develop any kind of empathy or rapport with them. You visit them for a moment and then they are gone. Personal Velocity is not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but I can only imagine that it worked much better on the page than it does on the screen.

Submitted 15 December 02. Posted 18 January 03.