Personal Velocity

Personal Velocity
by Rebecca Miller

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DVD Reviews of Personal Velocity

DVD Review: Three women recover personal strength and self-reliance
Summary: 4 Stars

The opening story is a neatly crafted account of a working class woman who regains her independence after marriage to an abusive husband (the flashes of his violence are shocking and brutal). But it's not enough that she takes her children and escapes. She must regain her emotional independence as well, and she finds herself in a situation where she must free herself again; this time from the leeringly casual abuse of a younger man who enjoys taunting her with invitations to sex. When she is done with him, you see her finally achieve the personal power (velocity) she once had as a younger woman.

The stories of the other two women are likewise well crafted, each taking a journey that has parallels with the first but explores different narrative terrain. One is a more comic tale of a young educated woman who through luck and circumstance becomes a "late bloomer" and suddenly outgrows her cute, devoted husband (a fact checker for the New Yorker), as well as a jerky, condescending former classmate and an overbearingly successful father. (It's his observation that she's achieved her own "personal velocity," and coming from the mouth of an unsympathetic character, the title of the film takes on a certain irony.)

The last story is (according to the director in her commentary) a quickly assembled piece that uses conventions of the road movie to tell the story of a young woman who ventures into what may become a romantic interlude with a young man who is suddenly killed by a passing car. The abrupt shift of the story sends her reeling, and she becomes involved with another male companion, a troubled and physically abused boy she picks up on the road. By the end of the story, her car stolen, she is able to find the direction she wants to take, and she sets off afoot, having discovered a self confidence that until now has eluded her.

The three sections of the film are clearly dramatized short stories, an effect that is reinforced by a narrator's voice-overs. There are mixed opinions about the use of this device in film, but it works here as a distancing technique that reinforces these as stories and not just visual slices of life. In the middle story especially, but in all of them, it intensifies the ironies of what we're seeing. The news reports of the pedestrian fatality in the early stories ironically weave them together with the final story, in which that fatality occurs. We're reminded that, for all the differences among them, these characters inhabit the same universe, though they are strangers to each other.

The digital filming and brisk editing give an edginess to the visuals. And the performances are fine. The commentaries on the DVD add a level of appreciation, as they often do for indie films made under severe constraints but with utter dedication. I recommend this film to anyone interested in movies about women's lives. It is sharp, intelligent, and emotionally engaging.

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