The Movie: I only ever heard about this movie because folks had mentioned it at DVexpo West 2002 because it was shot on digital video, and being that it was the "Digital Video" expo, it was a pretty big deal. Of course, that was back when people were still making a big deal about feature films being shot digitally, but after a whole bunch of crappy digital movies came out, people stopped trying to use that as a selling point.

Anyway, this is not a crappy movie, though I know that it probably won't exactly fit into a whole lot of people's tastes. I guess if I had to try to describe this movie succinctly, it's like a Lifetime movie, but with an edge. It's based on a collection of short stories written by Rebecca Miller (daughter of famed playwright Arthur) who also wrote the screenplay and directed this film.

The film is comprised of three separate vignettes of women who are basically unrelated, with the exception of the fact that they are all acting, or on the verge of acting on a need to get out of a suffocating relationship or situation. The first is a mother who is taking herself and her children away from their abusive father, the second a woman who perhaps has "outgrown" her mate, and the third... well I wasn't exactly sure what was going on with that one.

Honestly, I didn't really start getting into the film until about half way through the second story, and I was actually kind of amazed that I was able to sit through the whole thing. At 85 minutes, it's pretty short as movies go... but it sure didn't seem that way to me!

There are some pretty decent performances turned out by the lead actresses, Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, and Fairuza Balk, (as well as a very, very, small role played by Wallace Shawn), and maybe it was the acting that actually kept me into the story more than the story itself, I can't really say for sure.

So while I don't want to call this a particularly bad movie, I don't particularly want to call it a good movie either, and I'm pretty sure it will be enjoyed by the hipper segment of the Lifetime movie crowd.

The DVD: For being a film that was touted as a showcase for just how good digital video could look when converted to film, they sure didn't do a very good job bringing the film to DVD. They provide you with two versions of the film -- one in anamorphic widescreen, and one in 4:3 pan and scan. Unfortunately to do this, they had to use a very low video bitrate which results in MPEG2 compression artifacts all over the place, especially around any sharply contrasting edges. If they had just stuck to providing one version of the film and used double the bit rate (or even just two-thirds more), I'm sure they could have come away with a fantastic, flawless transfer.

Besides, trying to crop out a pan and scan version of a film that was shot on the already reduced resolution of video is pretty ridiculous, in my opinion. They should have just stuck with providing just the widescreen version. I really don't think anyone who has actually even heard of this film would really mind "those black bars".

Audio, though technically presented in 5.1 surround, remained mostly focused on the front part of the soundstage, though this being a mostly dialog-driven piece, there is nothing really too surprising about that.

Special features include a couple of commentary tracks, a trailer, and a behind the scenes featurette.

Overall, this might be worth a rental to some people, but I think most people (particularly, men) would be better off staying away.