American Woman

American Woman

Jake Scott’s “American Woman” is a time spanning life story with a script by Brad Ingelsby, the writer of “Out of the Furnace,” that builds slowly but rewards slyly, as befits something with such a far reaching generic title. And the best and biggest thing in it this is putting Miller’s achievement mildly is Miller herself, in an expansive performance as the lead stars and stripes female indicated by that title.

This is career-best work from her, rooted in emotional muscles that flex widely; sometimes she’s knowingly flat and dull, like the ordinary small-town woman whose life she’s living. Other times she’s so manically scarred you can feel pain trace its way up through your bones inside her. The rest of what surrounds her isn’t exactly new or clean, alas: She plays a grief-stricken single mother sleepwalking through midlife crisis and maturity.

But Miller owns the material and turns it into one of those things you can’t look away from, even as you’re reminded how effortlessly compelling she made even especially? her relatively thankless part in “American Sniper.”

Deb (Miller) looks to be somewhere between 30 and 40 years old (it takes some doing to make out Sienna Miller as being anything but at a peak age), though mostly we know just that she has been alive for a while now; she is also grandmother to Jesse (Aidan McGraw), Sky Ferreira’s baby son whom Deb does not seem particularly interested in helping care for.

And it’s not all until Bridget disappears one day without a trace. Tyler (Alex Neustaedter), the only suspect according to Deb (played by Jesse’s biological father) is also a dead end the poor kid has nothing to do with her disappearance. So then we have The Night It All Ends, when Deb’s affair does end after the frenzied and near-tragic night she shows up at her married boyfriend’s door like a crazy bunny boiler. But before you know it, boom: six years later.

Bridget is still gone; Deb is taking business classes and raising young Jesse (Aidan McGraw) on a jam-packed schedule. What better way to put even more pressure on our protagonist than by sticking her with an abusive live-in who works Ray (Pay Healy) pays for everything but doesn’t hesitate to scream and shove?

They’re saved by Terry and Katherine, of course. Once she gets out of that mess, though, Deb keeps thriving in life she lands a good job and an actually decent boyfriend named Chris (Aaron Paul of “Breaking Bad”), whom she later marries and he becomes a father figure for older-Jesse (played by Aidan Fiske). But no relationship can go untroubled.

The good news is that the movie won’t leave you hanging about what happened to Bridget. A random phone call confirms Deb’s worst fears, although because so much time has passed in the story we don’t meet her level of grief. Still, Miller turns in one truly stunning performance in this last chapter of the film. Throughout, you can see other single mothers deposited within her: Patricia Arquette from “Boyhood,” Frances McDormand’s Mildred from “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and Angelina Jolie’s Christine Collins from “Changeling.”

She even sorta faintly resembles Norma Rae at one point while working. Miller distills all these hardworking, idiosyncratic and far from perfect mothers into a towering performance that grows up with Deb. Her makeup gets more subtle, her hairstyle tamer; one particularly inspired production design decision gives her small, modest kitchen a believable face-lift. “American Woman” isn’t necessarily serving anything new, but the range of the table spread which Miller so fluently commands is still awe-inspiring.

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