Who knew Sienna Miller could carry a movie? She was awesome in The Girl, but to my knowledge she hasn't starred in a solo leading role yet in her cinematic career. And while American Woman gives her plenty to work with, it also doesn't do her many favors, which is why its powerful emotional resonance belongs entirely to Miller's powerful performance.
Though its terrible title suggests a sprawling, generic story, American Woman is a remarkably small film. It's a deep character study that sacrifices plot cohesion and thematic heft in its intimate portrait of a woman on the brink. That woman, 30- or 40-something Debra, lives in rust-belt Pennsylvania in the early millennium with her daughter Bridget and (it's incredible, but) infant grandson Jesse. Debra lives across the street from her sister (Christina Hendricks) and her family, with whom she shares a loving but not quite mutually supportive relationship. Her single mother status doesn't stop Debra from trying to be happy between working and dating men who aren't very good to or for her. But she shows herself to be a capable and reliable mother and grandmother.
Until, that is, disaster strikes. After watching Jesse one night while Bridget goes on a date with her baby daddy, Debra is awoken by Jesse's cries. Bridget hasn't come home. She interrogates the boy, who claims his innocence, and Bridget's friend, who were apparently the last people to see Bridget before she walked home. With little information to go on, she calls the police, but the case goes cold quickly. Debra's life spirals out of control as she descends to near-madness; suddenly raising an infant, and dealing with her grief and confusion, she is forced to reckon with her own mother and sister while trying to support herself. Her personal desires are put at risk, and her relationships with men deteriorate, including one unfaithful man she confronts in front of his wife. She unsuccessfully attempts suicide.
But, just as I was wondering if this would be a crime thriller like Prisoners, the movie jumps ahead in time to show Debra raising Jesse not as an infant but as a young boy. She's still having trouble with men and with her family, but she is cultivating a tentative friendship with Jesse's father, who seems to be getting his own life together. We jump ahead yet again, as she finally begins dating a good guy named Chris (Aaron Paul) and they try building a life together. But, we suspect rightfully, even this won't end well.
So the Debra saga becomes more of an odyssey of a single mother's life when put into an unthinkable situation. Its lack of temporal unity, if you want to get Aristotelian, threatens the drama of the film because we only get snippets of Debra's life. This is not Rabbit Hole, which though not necessarily taking place in one day manages to feel emotionally cohesive. We begin to feel stretched -- much like Debra -- between her interactions with toxic people and her attempts to reclaim her own life. To this point, the production design is quietly astonishing, as we immediately understand Debra's changing reality due to her subtler makeup and hairstyles, her ever-so-slightly more mature home decor, and even a believably beautiful home improvement I most noticed in her kitchen. It's those little "lived-in" details that no doubt helped Miller's performance.
But the movie is all hers, and her lack of pretense shows me that she probably didn't know it, or care. She's just endlessly delivering on all fronts, and it's an awesome feat. When we finally resolve the mystery of Bridget's disappearance -- and rest assured that we do -- Miller's cathartic delivery is so stunning it moved me to tears even as I was wondering why. That shows her power in a film that has precious little strength on its own.
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