Science has always been a favourite with film-makers - Jurassic Park being a prime case in point. But physics? Newton's laws of motion have been used by three new video and laser releases to demonstrate the impact a forceful outsider can have on otherwise stable lives.
BODIES, REST AND MOTION (VIDEO/LASER, 95 MINUTES, 1993) NEWTON'S first law of motion is that a body at rest, or in motion, will remain in that state until subjected to an outside force - inertia. For the bodies of the title, this law suggests that their inertia can only be roused by collision with a forceful outsider.
Michael Steinberg's low-budget, independent romance is an absorbing adaptation of Roger Hedden's 1986 play about a group of twenty-somethings in Enfield, Arizona whose dead-end lives have left them listless and disillusioned.
Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs) plays an emotionally restless TV salesman and chain-smoker. He lives with Bridget Fonda but frolics with his ex-girlfriend, Phoebe Cates. The film opens with his apathetic assertion, 'We're moving, we're moving, we're gonna move'. It sounds like Waiting For Godot, another play about the metaphysics of lethargy. He takes off on a pseudo quest for his roots, leaving Fonda in the lurch, but returns without any renewed sense of meaning. However, by this time things have changed.
Fonda is another victim of the American Dream. Abandoned, she surveys the ruins of an empty life. Into the framework steps Eric Stoltz, painter and purveyor of a simpler dream. He knows who he is and what he wants, even though he has a slushy way of saying so. His love for Fonda knocks her out of kilter, sends Roth back to Cates and provides the motion needed to spur on the film.
Bodies, Rest And Motion may be a bit slow for some (as its subject is ennui) but it cuts an intelligent line through the realities of love, sex and relationships. Roth, Fonda and Cates are excellent as the emotionally dispossessed.