Committed

(Miramax)

Lisa Krueger's film has Joline (Heather Graham, her bug eyes matching the striking graphics of her T-shirts) as 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." 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, creates a 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. But though it sags from its own preciousness in the middle, the film rewards the viewer's commitment in the end, as its genial diversions freeze into genuine subversiveness.