NORMAL LIFE (70)

Directed by: John McNaughton

Starring: Ashley Judd, Luke Perry, Tom Towles

The Pitch: A doomed, mismatched couple : she childlike and unstable - painfully unequipped for "normal life" - he a straight-arrow cop desperately in love with her.

Theo Sez: The calm, detached, quietly compassionate style that was the really shocking thing about HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER is employed again in this low-key, hauntingly atmospheric movie. Despite the gung-ho opening it's actually at its least interesting when it strays into Bonnie and Clyde territory ; nor, despite two terrific performances, is it even at its best in charting the central relationship (which is one of those, as in BETTY BLUE, where one party is so impossibly screwed-up that the other's loyalty can only be explained by invoking the catch-all excuse of "amour fou"). What's truly memorable is the interaction of these characters with their environment, a bleak Midwest of parking lots and shooting ranges. The film's genius is in communicating the deadening mediocrity of this sad, soulless world without making it explicit that its whole plot depends on it - pretending this story could happen anywhere when in fact it could only happen here. Few films this year have found so much texture while making so little fuss about it.