Committed Blu-ray Review
When a Man Leaves a Woman
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, April 22, 2013
"I guess some people are born with a knack for faith . . ."
In retrospect, the 1990s were a golden age for independent film, a time when national prosperity
and corporate diversity in the movie business allowed numerous distinctive voices to obtain
funding. One such voice was writer-director Lisa Krueger, who managed to make two features
before the money dried up. The first,
Manny & Lo (1996), was about two runaway sisters who
kidnap a clerk in a baby supply store; in a sign of Krueger's ability to spot talent, the film
featured a pre-teen Scarlett Johannson in one of her earliest roles. The second film was
Committed, which is loaded with familiar faces, some that were already famous, and some that
became better known later on.
Krueger's work is the kind of left-field oddball stuff that festival audiences routinely love and
general audiences shrug off. After
Committed was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the
2000 Sundance Film Festival (and won for its cinematography), Miramax released it to a handful
of theaters the following April, and no one showed up. The film had to find its audience on
DVD, as such films usually do.
Because
Committed is told entirely from the point of view of a narrator, Joline, who sees the
world from a perspective that others don't share—it's the quality that most defines her—the film
requires something of a leap of faith on the part of the audience, who has to accept Joline as they
find her. Appropriately enough, "leap of faith" is an important concept for Joline. It's something
she does when she feels a task or an obligation calling to her urgently but can't explain why. She
follows her instincts, and the intensity with which she does so is what makes her truly
"committed". It's also why she has to keep explaining that no, she really isn't stalking her ex-husband. But somehow, once you have to start giving
that explanation, you're already in trouble.
It takes Joline the entire length of
Committed to reconcile the depth of her commitment with a
world that doesn't take these things as seriously as she does.
We first encounter Joline (Heather Graham) on the day of her wedding to Carl (Luke Wilson). In
a fit of nerves, Carl defies the traditional ban on seeing the bride in her wedding dress before the
ceremony and bursts in on Joline as she's preparing, closely followed by the best man, Joline's
brother, Jay (Casey Affleck). For a woman who believes in luck, chance and fate, this is a bad
sign, but the wedding goes off without a hitch.
A little less than two years later, however, all is not well. Carl is in a funk, his career as a
photojournalist stalled, because his editor keeps sending him to cover stories about restaurants
and food. Meanwhile, Joline energetically manages a downtown New York music club, where
her number one attribute is that any promise she makes is absolutely reliable. Jay works at the
club, as does Joline's friend Meg (Summer Phoenix). The latest musical act is a glitzy fellow
named Chicky (Wood Harris, who would shortly become better known as the fearsome Avon
Barksdale on
The Wire). When Jay isn't working, he lives with a lesbian couple (Clea Duvall and
Kim Dickens), one of whom occasionally shares his bed.
One day, though, Joline returns home to an apartment emptied of Carl's belongings and a note
saying he's left. Joline, whose wedding band is a tattoo around her ring finger, can't wrap her
mind around the abandonment, and her mind wobbles in despair. But then, at a party originally
planned to cheer up Carl that Joline refuses to cancel (look for Jon Stewart among the guests),
she has a breakthrough: Carl just needs her to find him and repair their marriage. Off goes Joline
in a rented car criss-crossing the highways and byways of Texas until she finds the husband to
whom she committed before God and man to be faithful for life. But first she takes yet another
leap of faith on a soulful car-jacker (Art Alexakis) to whom she gives enough money for a ticket
home to his mother's house on Long Island so that he can get clean and start over. (The film is
full of such small detours.)
Why Texas out of all the fifty states? It would take too long to explain. But there's a logic to it.
After several misadventures, Joline finds Carl taking pictures for a newspaper in El Paso. (Her
meeting with his editor, played by Dylan Baker, is a comic gem.) But Joline doesn't want to
surprise Carl unduly. She's looking for the right way to "ease" the two of them back into wedded
bliss. To that end she hangs back and observes the new life he's made for himself. How could
anyone confuse such behavior with stalking?
Joline's bizarre approach allows the film to introduce an additional group of characters. These
include Carl's new girlfriend, a waitress at a Mexican restaurant named Carmen (Patricia
Velasquez, who is probably best known as the beautiful Egyptian princess Anck Su Namun in
The Mummy and
The Mummy Returns). When Carmen learns that Carl has a wife, she drops him
instantly, but in an odd turn, she bonds with Joline, whom Carmen takes to meet her grandfather,
a Mexican medicine man she calls Grampy (actor and director Alfonso Arau, whose extensive
credits include
The Wild Bunch and
The Three Amigos). Meanwhile, Carmen's ex-
boyfriend,
T-Bo (Mark Ruffalo), cruises his truck past Carl's condo, threatening violence, and Carl's
neighbor, Neil (Goran Visnjic), an amateur craftsman, shamelessly flirts with Joline whenever he
spots her parked nearby, spying on Carl's place. Adding to the complications is Jay, who comes
to El Paso to check on his sister, takes one look at Carmen, and decides to stay for a while.
How does this mess get untangled? It would be unfair to say, but Mary Kay Place, one of the
stars of
Manny & Lo, has a cameo as a psychiatrist, and a certain amount of magic is involved,
courtesy of "Grampy". Since the film is a comedy, some sort of happy ending is essential.
But calling
Committed a comedy doesn't mean that it has jokes, punchlines or belly laughs. The
film is comedic in its refusal to take anything seriously, including itself and its heroine, and its
ability to portray the absurdity of Joline's quest without mocking it is a delicate balance. Krueger
acknowledges the difficulty, maybe even the impossibility, of two people committing themselves
to a lifetime together, even as she celebrates the nobility of the effort. It's such an unlikely
undertaking that you need all the help you can get, whether from ancient magic, modern
psychology or just dumb luck.
