Personal Velocity MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +1 Content: -4

Taken from the short stories of Rebecca Millers book, Personal Velocity is an artful three-story drama that looks into the lives of three unique women who never cross paths. The first centers on Delia (Kyra Sedgwick), who decides to stay with her father when her mother leaves the family. The focus quickly moves to young Delias sexual encounters. She marries a physically abusive man, starts a family, and eventually leaves with the children. The next drama involves Greta (Parker Posey), the daughter of a power lawyer. Growing up, she experiences a wonderful nurturing relationship with her dad, but he leaves her mother for another woman when Greta is away at college. She marries a stable, bland man but grows bored with him as she works her way up the corporate ladder. The third drama concerns Paula (Fairuza Balk), an aimless woman rescued from a park bench by a man who becomes her live-in lover. After a near-death experience, she searches for meaning in her life. The film provides little laughter to ease the tension of the painful, crisis-filled lives of the characters.

The movie is a powerful and realistic portrayal of relationships without commitment. Three women are shown to be negatively affected by the sins of their parents. Their adult lives are reactions to those mistakes. If the scenes were not so graphic and amoral, this might have been viewed as a positive film opposing unfaithfulness. In an especially disturbing scene, a normal- looking family is sitting around the dinner table when the father suddenly takes the mothers head and repeatedly bangs it against the table in front of the children. Near nudity and sexual situations are abundant. Self gratification occurs a few times. In one sequence, a sincere Seventh-day Adventist confronts a man and tells him that he will go to Hell for smoking pot and cursing. The underlying message of Personal Velocity is that everything in life somehow centers on sex. This film is rated as extremely unacceptable because of numerous sexual encounters, brief violence and foul language.

Preview Reviewer: Blaine Butcher
Distributor: United Artists