Writer and director Rebecca Miller(daughter of legendary playwright Arthur) patches together three stories of three different women for this film and the movie itself is quite an intriguing curiosity for it.
Delia(Kyra Sedgwick,familiar yet still distinctive here)is an abused housewife and mother who's only known really one thing about herself-her sexuality-and has to find a way out of her sad,low-esteemed predicament,while wondering if she should use her sexuality or not; Greta(Parker Posey,for whom the type of roles she could inhabit are practically limitless) is a career-driven woman whose marriage is peaceful but uninspiring; and Paula(Fairuza Balk,whose angry eyes and wild visage is an ironic contrast to the scared character she's playing),has escaped a horrifying accident and now aids a runaway teen,all the while mindful of the fact that she's just learned she's pregnant.
I must say I was quite pleased with elements of the movie:the narration,the anthology of it and,of course,the actors,who all are very fine here. But I suppose what left me dry here was the way these stories played out. I will not go into any detail so as to inadvertently throw out spoilers,but it to me felt like these stories were resolved in ways that seemed only evident to the writer herself. I read one reviewer describe these tales as sorts of "Women's lib" stories,and that may be true,and not being a woman myself and certainly not a feminist,I suppose if these endings seemed lost on me,well,that's my problem I suppose.
Not a movie for those who absolutely NEED their films to have a sort of set,rising-plot/climax/denouement model in order to digest their usage of 90 min to 2 hours of time,but I suspect that the film's creator doesn't really care about that. She set out to portray three ordinary yet intriguing characters and,for the most part,I feel like she succeeded.
