In 'Bubble,' Stunted Souls in A Heartland Hell

In "Bubble," it's Martha's daily job to create dolls' heads, leaving each with a set of bright, baby blues. The machine she uses to pump air into each fist-size orb of plastic makes a sound like an intake of breath, as if Martha is giving the gift of life.

But in Steven Soderbergh's often-mesmerizing film -- shot in high-definition video and featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors -- the process is more chilling than wondrous. For Martha (Debbie Doebereiner), so expressionless behind her safety goggles, this is just a factory job in a depressed town. ("Bubble" was shot in Ohio and West Virginia.) There seems to be more vitality in those bright-eyed dolls than in Martha or her fellow workers, who break for fast food at lunchtime, engage in listless chatter, then return to their nooks. They're socioeconomic bottom feeders, lost in a static, heartland hell, and even if we didn't know that Soderbergh was at the helm, we'd sense that something horrifying or sanctifying is about to happen.

Martha has developed a maternal attachment (although it might be more) for co-worker Kyle (Dustin James Ashley), a laconic high school dropout who shares a trailer with his TV-entranced mother (Laurie Lee). But that relationship is upended by the arrival at the factory of Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins), the attractive single mother of a 2-year-old. She immediately wrests Kyle's allegiance from the portly, middle-aged Martha and, to add further insult, asks Martha to baby-sit so she can have a date with him. She engages in screaming battles with her ex-boyfriend Jake (Kyle Smith), the father of her child. And she even filches money from Kyle's bedroom drawer on one occasion.

When one of the workers is found murdered, it's up to Don (Decker Moody), a police investigator, to identify the culprit. We never see the killing, yet we have little doubt about the perpetrator's identity. We yearn for a "Law & Order"-ish confrontation between Don (in a sense, our moral arbiter) and the murderer. We want the killer to be found, confronted and to dissolve into a tearful burst of confession -- at the very least, to shake the catatonic ennui that hangs over this town.

But Soderbergh and screenwriter Coleman Hough aren't interested in creating a coy whodunit so much as evoking the deeper, less romantic mysteries of people -- and it's riveting. We learn, for instance, that seemingly tranquil Kyle suffers panic attacks among large groups of people; it's mainly why he dropped out of high school. Is he a sweetheart, or something more volatile? We see Rose help herself to a bath in the house she's supposed to be cleaning. But is she a bad girl or just impulsive? Martha, the den mother of the group, has moments of what seem to be religious reveries, her blue eyes illuminated like the dolls in the factory. What exactly is she experiencing?

"Bubble" taps right into a film style I would term as deadpan, in which the actors seem to be hypnotized, spiritually lethargic. It's the expressionless mode you see in many genres, including 1950s horror flicks ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers") and the downbeat, art-house comedies of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki, in which alienated outsiders seem to sleepwalk through life in a permanent surrender of the soul. You see it, too, in the 1950s works of French filmmaker Robert Bresson and his portrayal of the ineffable spirit inside the commonest people. He used nonprofessionals whom he directed not to show any emotion (and he referred to his performers as "models," fleshy pawns on his conceptual chessboard).

Like Bresson, Soderbergh uses "models," and what makes "Bubble" so hypnotic is the way their untrained presence imbues the film with untheatrical, more authentic mysteries. Their poker faces, minimalistic utterances and sometimes wooden actions force us to actively scrutinize them for the deepest insights, which come in dribs and drabs -- and yet they beget more questions. "Bubble" puts us on a sort of investigative edge and we leave the theater (or the living room, considering the movie is being simultaneously released on DVD and a high-definition television channel) still asking, still mulling.

In a world in which so many movies feed us pat answers, clear-cut explanations and motivations, the ambiguities in "Bubble" -- starting with the mystery of the title -- are refreshing. Soderbergh, on a break from his big-league projects -- those "Ocean's 11's," "12's" and the just-reported "13" -- has made a startlingly effective statement: Small, experimental and committed can so often provoke stronger emotions than those high-budget spectacles.

Bubble (72 minutes, at Landmark's E Street Cinema) is rated R for drug use and profanit y.