Bubble (2006)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.