Film Journal 2023: The Beanie Bubble
Directed by Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash
The whole “product origins” trend in film this year is admittedly getting a bit tired at this point. There is little doubt The Beanie Bubble falls prey to this exhaustion, made all the more relevant by the fact that its predecessors are simply the better films.
Set that aside though and this film has a decent amount working in its favor. I thought the editing was really solid, interspersing the straight forward progression of the story with jumps back and forth in time. And the performances, anchored by the three women who’s story this film is telling, are all solid. To the films benefit, these things only get stronger as the film goes on thanks to the genuine intrigue of its real world point of crisis.
Even if the film never quite finds a way to go from good to great, which i would argue is mainly because the intrigue of the source material is fairly limited in its scope, the way these stories are meant to be a microcosm of capitalism in general is still very effective. It makes you wonder if this isn’t the story that follows every product that exists in our world. The film would want us to believe that there are heroes at play here, examples of the good ones who fight back against the system. I don’t know how much of this story maps onto reality and how much is interpretive licence serving the drama; there is little doubt who the enemy is here, presenting one of the most unlikeable characters of the year. But at the very least it’s also wanting to offer a bit of hope. I certainly won’t begrudge it for that
The Stories of my Life 