Nine Lives (2005)

This is one of those movies with a conceit.

Here we've got nine separate mini-movies, each of which showcases about 10 minutes of a woman's (and in one case, a girl's) life. It's impossible to get a full picture of any of these lives as what we're seeing is shown in a steadicam, real-time shot. Some of the characters pop up in more than one of the scenes, but even those characters don't feel complete -- we're simply seeing them from an additional angle.

But, just as a collection of short stories isn't a novel -- this series of shorts is not a cohesive film. It's interesting and often evocative, but it doesn't fully satisfy.

B