Victor Nunez imbues this unsentimental tale of a young woman's emotional journey with a sense of poetry seldom seen in cinema. By poetry I mean the sense in which the literary and the cinematic come into play. There is something very literary about the film, almost as if a novel has been adapted page by page to screen. In this sense, the film achieves depths many cannot; but it is also rather slow at other times, undercutting the depths it once achieved in favor of ennui. The film's star Ashley Judd has not yet made a better film than her debut here. She fits the role of lead Ruby like a glove, almost as if she didn't have to act. She has true movie star presence in the film, and hasn't really managed to convey the same allure in her later films, although she was impressive in Normal Life.
