Committed

In recent movies -- Boys Don't Cry, Girl Interrupted, 28 Days -- the girl usually rebels against the traditional female role and has to pay for her sins. In Lisa Krueger's Committed, things are a little different. Joline (Heather Graham, her bug eyes matching the striking graphics of her T-shirts) is the thriving owner of a Manhattan rock club who gives it all up when her useless husband, Carl (Luke Wilson, which is about as useless as it gets), runs off to get some "space." Does she celebrate? No, Joline is committed to being a wife, so, defying common sense and the advice of her friends (Casey Affleck as her vaguely incestuous kid brother is especially annoying), she heads for the deserts of the West in search of the bounder. Krueger, who demonstrated a promising if half-baked quirkiness in her debut, Manny & Lo, shows commitment too -- to a kind of laid-back picaresque where eccentric characters like a hunky French papier-mâché artist, a psychotic trucker, and a canny Mexican witch doctor and his hip daughter come and go and the plot seemingly goes nowhere. Although it sags from its own preciousness in the middle, the film rewards the viewer's commitment as well, as its genial diversions freeze into genuine subversiveness.

-- Peter Keough