---
title: "Bubble"
year: 2006
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/bubble"
fi1m_id: "bubble"
imdb_id: "tt0454792"
tmdb_id: 14788
wikidata_id: "Q2620666"
fi1m_score: 68
critics_score: 65
critics_reviews: 11
published: "2026-09-09"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:54.460855+00:00"
region: "LT"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Bubble (2006)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh · 1h 13m · Drama, Crime, Mystery

## Identity

Bubble

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/bubble
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** bubble
- **IMDb ID:** tt0454792
- **TMDB ID:** 14788
- **Wikidata ID:** Q2620666
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454792/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/14788, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2620666

**Fi1m score: 68** · Critics 65 from 11 reviews

*In a sentence:* Seventy-three minutes, three people, one doll factory, and the fluorescent light never once flatters anybody

> Steven Soderbergh’s small, cool film about two women and a young man in a doll factory is closely watched and exactly cast, and it earns its quiet. It also stops before it has finished.

## Synopsis

Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) is a middle-aged woman in a small town who lives with her elderly father (Omar Cowan), works on the line at a doll factory, and drives her much younger colleague Kyle (Dustin James Ashley) to work every morning. They eat lunch together and say little. Then Rose (Misty Wilkins), a young single mother with a small daughter, Jesse (Madison Wilkins), is taken on at the factory, and the arrangement between Martha and Kyle shifts. Steven Soderbergh directs, shoots and edits, from a script by Coleman Hough, with a cast of non-professional actors from the area. It runs 73 minutes.

## Review

Steven Soderbergh made this between two *Ocean’s* films, and it is hard to think of a sharper change of scale. Seventy-three minutes in a doll factory in a town nobody would visit on purpose, acted by people who had never acted before, shot and cut by the director himself on digital video. The tagline calls it “Another Steven Soderbergh Experience”, which is about the right level of self-mockery. *Bubble* is a careful, cool, exactly cast small film that we admired for an hour and then watched run out of things to do.

Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) is large, kind and unhurried. She lives with her father (Omar Cowan), makes his meals and drives Kyle (Dustin James Ashley), a thin young man who barely speaks, to the factory each morning. They eat lunch together on a bench. Coleman Hough’s script gives them conversations so ordinary that at first we wondered whether the sound was on. Then Rose (Misty Wilkins) is hired, with a small daughter and a quicker way of talking than anyone else in the building, and Martha offers to babysit.

The factory is where Soderbergh’s camera is happiest. He holds it still and keeps everything in focus, so the vinyl heads on their racks and the workers pressing eyes into sockets are equally sharp, equally lit, equally unremarkable. Nobody plays music over the work; we hear the compressors and the small thump of a head going into a mould. He cuts each scene off a beat early, to black, so the day is a run of short rooms with nothing between them. It is a plain way to shoot and it is the right one for these lives.

Doebereiner is the film. Her face does almost nothing, and the film has been built so that almost nothing reads. There is a moment in the break room, early, when Kyle laughs at something Rose has said and Martha watches from a table away, and we felt a small, exact ache that we had not braced for. Nothing has happened. A woman has noticed that a boy she gives lifts to is happy, and that she is not the cause. Ashley mumbles and looks at the floor, which is right for Kyle, and Wilkins gives Rose an edge of impatience that the town has not managed to sand off.

Robert Pollard and Todd Tobias supply the music, short acoustic guitar figures that arrive between scenes rather than under them, so the film is never told what to feel by its own soundtrack. It is a modest choice and it holds. The non-professional cast mostly holds too, though not always: some pauses are a character thinking and some are a person waiting for the next line, and we could tell which.

The second half takes a turn we will not describe. Decker Moody arrives late, patient and unshowy, and his scenes are shot the same way as the lunches, which is the point. But the point is made quickly, and after that the film’s interest in these people narrows to a single question. The hour of watching Martha at the sink and the line has been traded for talk in a room. Some critics have read the film’s coolness as contempt for its characters. We do not think it is contempt. We think it is distance, and at 73 minutes distance can feel like leaving before the end of the visit.

Soderbergh has been here before in spirit. [*Sex, Lies, and Videotape*](https://film.one/film/sex-lies-and-videotape) (1989) trusted small rooms and long looks and had more to say when it was done. [*Full Frontal*](https://film.one/film/full-frontal) (2002), also written by Hough, was the same kind of experiment with a cast that knew it was one. *Bubble* is the more honest of the two and the thinner.

Watch it at home, on a weeknight, with nothing planned afterwards. It asks for close attention and gives back a few faces you will remember and one afternoon in a break room that we have not shaken. It does not give back much more than that, and it knows it does not, which is either admirable or a little bit of a shrug. It runs 73 minutes.

*Fi1m score 68, published 9 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

With only 3 reviews in so far, the early word on Bubble is respectful rather than warm. The praise clusters around Soderbergh’s non-professional local cast, which critics find brings an awkward, convincing realism to the story of jealousy and murder in a depressed doll-factory town, and around the high-definition video, which The New Yorker credits with sharp, deep-focus images that give weight to the characters’ trapped lives.

The reservations are about temperature: Film Comment finds the mix of neorealism and tabloid sensationalism disconcerting, and Variety, reviewing from a festival, calls the tale likeable but unexciting. The spread is narrow, with nobody yet dismissing it.

## Straight answers

**Is Bubble worth watching?**

*Bubble* is worth watching for anyone patient enough to sit with three quiet people in a doll factory for 73 minutes, and we scored it 68. Steven Soderbergh's still camera and Debbie Doebereiner's almost motionless face earn an hour of close attention. The second half narrows to a single question and stops before it has finished, so go in expecting a sketch rather than a story.

**How long is Bubble, and what is it rated?**

*Bubble* runs 1h 13m. It is a drama and crime film.

**Where can I watch Bubble in Lithuania?**

*Bubble* is not on any streaming or rental service in Lithuania at the moment. Availability is checked daily.

**How violent or frightening is Bubble, and is it suitable for children?**

*Bubble* carries an R certificate in the United States and none in the UK, and it is an adult film in tone rather than in anything shown on screen. The review records no violence or frightening scenes; the pace is slow, the talk is ordinary and a crime enters the second half without spectacle. It is not for children, who would simply be bored.

**How does Bubble compare to Vera Drake?**

*Bubble* and [*Vera Drake*](https://film.one/film/vera-drake) both watch ordinary working lives until a police knock changes them, but Mike Leigh's film is the fuller and more affecting of the two. Imelda Staunton makes Vera's care for others hard to bear; Soderbergh keeps Martha at a cool distance and cuts away early. Choose *Vera Drake* if you want to feel it, *Bubble* if you want to observe.

**What should I watch after Bubble?**

After *Bubble*, try [*Wanda*](https://film.one/film/wanda) (1970, Fi1m 83): Barbara Loden’s Pennsylvania drifter; the same flat light and nobody looking away. Then [*Rosetta*](https://film.one/film/rosetta) (1999, Fi1m 82): The Dardennes follow a girl who wants a job, and nothing else matters; and [*Vera Drake*](https://film.one/film/vera-drake) (2004, Fi1m 84): Mike Leigh’s kitchens and a police knock; the ordinary made unbearable.

### Reviews we read (11)

- **Screen Daily** (90/100, inferred): The critic praises the strong storyline, dramatic structure, and the eccentric DV camerawork and non-professional performances in this low-budget tragic love triangle set in small-town Ohio. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/bubble/4024239.article)
- **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): The critic finds the film completely gripping in its unassuming ordinariness, a leftfield psychological drama shot on HD video with non-professional actors that offers a ringside seat to a real story from real life. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2005/oct/26/londonfilmfestival2005.londonfilmfestival)
- **Time Out**, GA (90/100, inferred): The critic hails it as one of the finest American films of the year, commending Soderbergh's dispassionate yet compassionate gaze and the film's fresh realism. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/bubble)
- **The New Yorker**, David Denby (70/100, inferred): The film is strange and off-putting but far from nothing, offering a crabby, unyielding vision of an America suffocating in banality through its story of work, jealousy, and murder in a depressed factory town. It impresses with its use of high-definition digital video for sharp, deep-focus imagery that gives weight to the characters' trapped lives. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/02/13/home-and-abroad)
- **Film Comment**, Amy Taubin (65/100, inferred): The film is a disconcerting mix of neo-neorealism and tabloid sensationalism rather than the expected quickie genre exercise. Soderbergh's use of non-professional local actors brings verisimilitude and emotional blockages that refresh the familiar narrative. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/bubble-review/)
- **Variety**, Deborah Young (60/100, inferred): Soderbergh uses a non-pro cast to deftly sketch the dullness of a mid-American burg, where an unmotivated murder unveils a frightening moral vacuum amid the empty-pocket atmosphere of doll factory workers. The likeable if unexciting little tale has sly humor and commentary, with the three principals well cast and the understated direction complemented by low-key realism. [Read](https://variety.com/2005/film/markets-festivals/bubble-1200523526/)
- **IndieWire**, twhalliii (50/100, inferred): The critic finds the film unrequited in its emotional impact despite Soderbergh's experimental approach with non-professional actors. The review highlights the film's focus on working-class life and simmering tensions but notes a lack of deeper connection. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/news/general/the-2005-new-york-film-festival-unrequited-steven-soderberghs-bubble-227884/)
- **The Times**, Howard Swains (30/100, inferred): The reviewer notes that the measured portrayal of blue-collar routines recalls fine European cinema but finds the film not especially good overall, as the non-professional cast and video approach ultimately fail to make the fictional story sing despite some reluctant applause for confounding expectations. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/article/bubble-7gb7xw3vwbq)
- **Slant Magazine**, Keith Uhlich (10/100, inferred): The critic finds the film an empty, contemptuous exercise in Soderbergh's post-Limey mode, essentially a backwoods remake of Vera Drake that renders its working-class characters vague and its dialogue stilted. He singles out the artificial, affected rhythms of the non-professional cast and the soulless doll-factory setting as emblematic of its failures. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/bubble/)
- **Collider**, Matthew Mosley (85/100, inferred): The critic praises Bubble as a fascinating, restrained minimalist experiment that ranks among Soderbergh’s best films for its authentic depiction of working-class life. They single out the nonprofessional cast’s believable, documentary-like performances and the stripped-down HD camerawork as key strengths. [Read](https://collider.com/steven-soderbergh-bubble-movie-subverts-hollywood-glamour/)
- **The Playlist**, The Playlist Staff (B+): The critic calls Bubble one of Soderbergh’s most unheralded successes, a nimble small-town character study that turns into a micro-thriller and is mesmerizing, warm, and re-watchable. They single out the nonprofessional lead performance by Debbie Doebereiner (discovered at a KFC drive-through) as hypnotic and central to its success. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/steven-soderbergh-essential-films-retrospective-20130205/4/)

## Details

- **Director:** Steven Soderbergh
- **Director:** Steven Soderbergh
- **Writer:** Coleman Hough
- **Cinematography:** Steven Soderbergh
- **Editor:** Steven Soderbergh
- **Music:** Todd Tobias, Robert Pollard
- **Producer:** Gregory Jacobs
- **Cast:** Debbie Doebereiner as Martha; Omar Cowan as Martha's Father; Dustin James Ashley as Kyle (as Dustin Ashley); Phyllis Workman as Bakery Shopkeeper; Laurie L. Wee as Kyle's Mother (as Laurie Lee); Daniel R. Christian as Factory Supervisor; Misty Wilkins as Rose; Madison Wilkins as Jesse
- **Runtime:** 1h 13m
- **First release (Italy):** 3 September 2005
- **Genres:** Drama, Crime, Mystery
- **Budget:** $2 million
- **Box office:** $261,966

## Where to watch in Lithuania

Not streaming, renting or buying in Lithuania at the last check.

## If you liked this

- *Wanda* (1970), Fi1m 83: Barbara Loden’s Pennsylvania drifter; the same flat light and nobody looking away. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/wanda.md)
- *Rosetta* (1999), Fi1m 82: The Dardennes follow a girl who wants a job, and nothing else matters. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/rosetta.md)
- *Il Posto* (1961): A Milanese boy gets a desk for life; work as a slow, kind trap.
- *Vera Drake* (2004), Fi1m 84: Mike Leigh’s kitchens and a police knock; the ordinary made unbearable. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/vera-drake.md)
- *Wendy and Lucy* (2008): Michelle Williams, a dog, a car park, and money running out in real time.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/bubble