BUBBLE

But, It Couldn’t Have Been Me, Could It?

While I enjoyed Steven Soderbergh’s indie debut, Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), I didn’t see another of his films until a friend loaned me DVDs of Out of Sight (1998), The Limey (1999), and Traffic (2000). They were good but didn't particularly grab me. I still haven’t seen Erin Brokovich (2000), and I can take or leave the glossy, star-studded Ocean’s series (2001, 2004, 2007). Full Frontal and Solaris (both 2002) are better than reviews would have us believe, but no Soderbergh film to date prepared me for BUBBLE (2005) or its equally misunderstood stablemate from the sadly abandoned HDNet series, The Girlfriend Experience (2009). The key to unlocking these works is "subtext". They are, perhaps, the most overt socio-political criticisms you are likely to find in Soderbergh's oeuvre, in which he focuses (in each case) on the lives of two or three individuals from distinct (deliberately chosen and very different from each other) socio-economic settings.

Bubble is set in the mid-American town of Belpre, Ohio, and is cast with non-professional residents who play blue-collar workers in a struggling doll factory. The central character is frumpish 40-something Martha (played by Debbie Doebereiner, a burger bar manager in Belpre) and Kyle (played by Dustin James Ashley, whose mother and house serve as his character’s mum and home), a socially awkward young man for whom Martha has possessive feelings. When attractive single mum Rose (played by Misty Dawn Wilkins, a hairdresser in Belpre) takes a job in the factory and becomes friendly with Kyle, Martha feels threatened. Martha agrees to babysit for Rose (Wilkins's daughter plays the child) but is shocked to discover that Kyle is her date. Martha feels humiliated and betrayed. The following day Rose is found dead.

The next section of the film deals with the police investigation led by Detective Don Taylor (played by Decker Moody, a local policeman whose performance adds remarkable authenticity to the film). Moody’s matter-of-fact professionalism is credible in a way that few professional actors could match. The same is true of Doebereiner, Ashley and Wilkins, who each deliver performances of quotidian conviction that lend substantial weight to Soderbergh’s thematic argument. To criticise the film based on these performances is to miss one of many points.

As film critic Amy Taubin noted, “the awkwardness and emotional blockages of these first-time actors … are closer to Bresson’s models … the opaqueness of Doebereiner’s expression makes us watch her … something in her eyes suggests that she is so habituated to swallowing her anger and grief that she doesn’t even know those feelings exist in her.” Taubin’s brilliantly perceptive comments touch on profound thematic implications of national (if not global) denial. It’s similar to the thematic subtext one finds in the work of Haneke, Siedl, and others, which may be why Bubble feels so distinctly European. It came as no surprise to learn that Soderbergh cited the influence of Rainer Werner Fassbinder for this film.

The last section focuses on Soderbergh’s pointed allegory of denial and complicity. I say pointed, but you'll struggle to find reviews that support such a reading. Andrew Sarris came close. He hated the film but wondered if the dour setting and poor acting were an attempt by Soderbergh to say something about the ‘banality of evil’. He was bang on, but maybe not for the reasons he cited. The film's thematic subtext of denial and guilt is right there in its title. Of course, bubbles invariably burst, and the one that bursts here implicates the political acquiescence and complicity of everyone (in the USA and beyond) who ignores the expansionist violence of the military-industrial complex.

You may think such a reading requires a massive leap of subtextual imagination to equate the trauma-induced amnesia of a lonely middle-aged factory worker in Belpre with carnage in, say, Fallujah. But Bubble is fundamentally about denial and complicity. Soderbergh eschewed his renowned stylistic fluidity in favour of static shots that emphasise the locked-off stasis of his characters. Formally and thematically, Bubble is primarily political. The doll factory symbolises a historic American political legacy. As such, one might be tempted to accuse Soderbergh of heavy-handedness if it wasn’t for the fact that hardly anyone recognises it.

The end credits montage of still-shots featuring piles of doll parts — limbs, heads, torsos — is not only intentional but blatantly specific. This montage could be dismissed as mere end-credit colour if it wasn't central to Soderbergh’s intentions, as was locating the film in small-town America and employing local people as actors. I defy anyone to tell me that Martha's realisation that she has blood on her hands isn't intended to signal national (if not global) denial. When Martha asks herself, ‘did I do that?’ the implications are universal.