Personal Velocity: Three Portraits

Rebecca Miller’s second feature movie is just what you would expect to win awards at Sundance and similar festivals. Others can expect to sit through very roughly sketched plotlines - in this case, it’s three rather shallow stories about women that don’t particularly link up well or offer any satisfactory resolutions. The photography by Ellen Kuras consists of some shaky (cheap and trendy) video handheld shots, mostly taken with the zoom lens on extreme tight --producing a nauseating wobble cam-- with the operator attempting to frame the subject within a rocky, sea-sick making image. The ugly, sensationalistic situations and course dialogue are mostly drawn from the perspective of disenfranchised immature females. Some of the title characters prefer to live out female fantasies with all takers (even when in successful relationships of their own making)...actions that predictably lead to utter chaos. All these women are quite unbelievably devoid of the ability to learn from any obvious life experiences or moral sensibilities. It’s difficult to fully sympathise with these somewhat sordid characters or feel all that much empathy for their all too obvious and inevitable outcomes. Performances are OK with Michael Rohatyn supplying a cute minimalist main theme. Rebecca’s Dad, Arthur Miller, may have been a notable and worthy writer but that’s clearly not always guaranteed to transfer to the offspring. As an example of the ‘deep’ and arty writing, consider this line read by the stories narrator: “She felt the ambition drain out of her like pus from a lanced boil”... Strictly for undemanding viewers or the ‘types’ we see introducing movies on Foxtel, etc. Others may give up within the first 15 mins and be better off for doing so.