(Credit: www.Amazon.com)
Writer/Director:
Rodrigo Garcia
Cast:
Kathy Baker……….Camille
Amy Brenneman……….Lorna
Elpidia Carrillo……….Sandra
Glenn Close……….Maggie
Lisa Gay Hamilton……….Holly
Holly Hunter……….Sonia
Amanda Seyfried……….Samantha
Sissy Spacek……….Ruth
Robin Wright Penn……….Diana
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Magnolia Pictures present Nine Lives. Produced by Julie Lynn. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated R (for language, brief sexual content and some disturbing images).
The movie:
A woman strolls hand-in-hand with a man at a motel complex. They are headed to a room together. While walking he tells her he couldn’t get the liquor she wanted, so he settled for something else. He asks her if this is okay. She says sure, whatever you want. “I hate scotch,” he admits. But he would drink if she twisted his arm hard enough. After arriving at the room, the man leaves to get some ice. She gets up and opens the curtains and sees a police vehicle and a female being escorted away in handcuffs.
Curious, she meanders outside to the room where the female was apprehended. There she meets the night manager gathering up belongings. The manager tells her that the woman’s been on the run and said the guest talked about how unfair life was and her little girl. “We all make our beds, huh,” the manager bemuses as she walks out of the room.
The incident in turn makes the woman realize what she is doing; she’s having a sexual rendezvous at the motel with a man who is clearly not her husband. Uneasiness sets in and she goes back to her room and calls home. She asks her daughter how her day went and how dad is feeling. When her companion returns with a bucket of ice she kisses him on the head and leaves the motel.
This situation sounds like it would be the second act of a three-act film. The first act would be about a dysfunctional family; the third act would be about mending the fences of a broken marriage. But it stands on its own. This short story, starring Sissy Spacek and Aidan Quinn, is told in Nine Lives, an anthology of nine vignettes by writer-director Rodrigo Garcia. Each story is about women, each one is about truth and humanity, and everything that is conveyed is done so in a single shot lasting about 12 minutes.
The vignettes are not told in a linear fashion but there is some continuity. Characters that appear in one story may show up in another. This may have been Garcia’s intention after all. He creates his own little world where interaction may seem coincidental but has importance.
Take for instance the female being carted away by police in the above story. Her name is Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo) and she has a story all her own; it is the first episode told in Nine Lives. Here she is mopping the floors at a correctional facility. Today is visitor’s day and her daughter is coming. Talking on a phone, with a plate of glass in between them, Sandra realizes the telephone doesn’t work. She gets hysterical because she can’t talk to her daughter. Just another reason at how unfair her life is.
But you wouldn’t know about Sandra’s problems until you see the episode with the night manager talking to Ruth at some run-of-the-mill motel.
Other stories. Damian and Diana (Jason Isaacs and Robin Wright Penn), two former lovers who have an auspicious meeting inside a supermarket. Both are married and Diana is pregnant. The conversation is trivial because whatever they say or do will cause a great disruption in their lives. All we are left to question is why they broke up. No matter who they married, or what happens after today, they will still be “Damian and Diana,” Damian believes.
Kathy Baker plays Camille a woman who will undergo breast surgery. Lying in her hospital bed she is frightened and angry; she’s upset with her husband (Joe Mantegna) and has a short temper. A nurse adds a sedative to her IV drip so that she can be calm and relaxed before the surgery. It would be easy to say this story about one woman dealing with cancer, but it explores the callousness of hospitals. Surgeons who don’t meet the patients beforehand, waiting to insert sharp instruments into a person’s body. Richard, Camille’s husband, handles himself gracefully despite his wife’s bitchy attitude. When asked if he would take care of their child if something were to happen, he looks right at her and says, “What do you think?” He’s in for the long haul and nothing Camille says or does will make him go away.
A daughter (Lisa Gay Hamilton) returns home after a long absence of being away. The home appears to be a troubling place for the woman. As she wanders around the living room and backyard and cries at her bedroom door you understand why she’s been away for so long. Trying to escape the past of her childhood and the abuse she incurred by the father who raised her and her sister. Watching the scene we will discover the daughter is the same woman who is Camille’s nurse.
The last story has Glenn Close and Dakota Fanning having a picnic in a cemetery together. The final shot is heartbreaking, but is the perfect way to end these nine stories of women and truth.
Rodrigo Garcia writes from his heart and takes a realistic approach in his storytelling. He could have taken one short story and made it into a two-hour feature, but he chose not to. Each story works well on it’s own because they make us want to watch attentively. Every situation ends with the central character at a crossroads. Here and now is their turning point, but it is unknown what direction their lives will take. Thus, leaving us to wonder just what would happen.
Score: 9.5/10
The DVD:
VIDEO: How does it look?
(Presented in 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen)
Shot for a few hundred thousand dollars, Nine Lives uses natural light for exterior scenes and a few lights from a kit to illuminate the interiors. The transfer is surprisingly good considering a steadicam was the only camera used for shooting. The problem is the photographic quality. You won’t find any digitally-captured images here. Rodrigo Garcia direction gives way to physical flaws in his characters. They are not picture-perfect representations.
Score: 7/10
AUDIO: How does it sound?
(English Dolby Digital 5.1)
Since the film centers on women dealing with life in different ways, the only surround sound is dialogue or Edward Shearmur’s musical score. The voices are well defined and the use of ambient noise adds to Rodrigo Garcia’s film. You can even notice that when characters step out of frame they can still be heard. But it is Shearmur’s music that has a lasting affect. It is rarely used during Nine Lives, but when it fades up it occurs during a poignant moment – like the troubled daughter standing in the backyard, remembering a time when her life was pure and unadulterated.
Score: 7/10
SPECIAL FEATURES: Behind-the-scenes featurettes and a Q & A.
The three-part Q & A with some of the cast and crew highlights this Sony Pictures Home Entertainment release. Held at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute, Amy Brenneman, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Kathy Baker, Joe Mantegna, and Rodrigo Garcia sit and discuss the making of Nine Lives. At first, Garcia believed that he would only make one movie in his career. His last film, Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, came and went at the box office. So, he had no direction where he wanted to go. Then he had an idea for his next feature. Nine shots for a two-hour film.
If you watch all three parts (running a little over 72 minutes) you get a great explanation on the process of acting in film like Nine Lives. Garcia believes the script is the biggest piece of direction and casting is the single scariest moment in making a film. The two most vocal participants are Lisa Gay Hamilton and Joe Mantegna. They both have interesting beliefs on acting. Mantegna mentions how actors, particularly around Oscar time, stretch for a role. He’s not a big supporter of actors who win just because they play characters that have a disability or a disease. Hamilton believes as a performer you are not acting. You are being. You are living and breathing in the character you portray.
There are four behind-the-scenes featurettes that deal with a certain aspect of the film. The Women of Nine Lives is a brief look at the characters and the women who play them. The actresses talk about their character’s motivations and back stories. Blocking a Scene shows Rodrigo Garcia working with his director of photography Xavier Perez Grobet as the two map out the tracking shot for the “Sonia” story. The screen is split in half. On the right we see the scene play out as a couple walk through the courtyard outside towards an apartment complex. They go into the complex, up the elevator, and into a friend’s apartment. On the left we see the director and cinematographer working to develop the scene. It’s amazing how the pre-production is a paint-by-numbers correlation to the final product.
Working with One Continuous Take is a document of how difficult it was to do a scene in one take. Rodrigo Garcia had 18 days to shoot his film. Nine days were reserved for rehearsal. On the day of the shoot, each story would be shot 9 or 10 different times. This process is comparable to live theater, but the actors had to be sure their efforts were conveyed on camera.
The last feature, A Day at the Cemetery, explains how shooting on location is not easy when the ground is covered by tall grass and headstones. For viewers, the only benefit is learning about a steadicam rig by Henry Tirl, one of the operators. This extra is redundant because we get a complete walkthrough in the “Sonia” featurette.
For those who are lovers of movie trailers, the disc comes with numerous Sony Pictures advertisements, including: The Tenants, The Dying Gaul, and Thumbsucker.
Score: 6.5/10
