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Getting lost, then finding oneself in a mysterious 'Room'

Julia Barker needs to escape, and so she does, fleeing her dull, weathered life in search of something unspoken and abstract, something that in dramatic bolts appears to be a cavernous old warehouse, bare, dungy yet bathed in an ethereal guiding light spraying from a grid of industrial windows.

Celluloid Dreams 'Room' 3 out of 5 stars Director: Kyle Henry Starring: Cyndi Williams, Ken Bradley, Alexandra Kiester, Jacqui Cross, Gretchen Krich, Hannah Nicholas Run time: 83 minutes Release date: Jan. 21, 2005 Rating: Not rated. Rate 'Room'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

What is this place? The woman, clenched in midlife despair, spends much of Kyle Henry's transfixing and supremely confident debut feature, "Room," on a quest to locate the warehouse. It reveals itself in skull-cracking flashes, bizarre visions that suggest a psychic otherworld or celestial premonition. Is it a sanctuary in her mind from our disjointed white-noise world? Is she going mad?

"Room" raises many questions, including an almost David Lynchian one of just where it is taking us and what it means for the bewildered protagonist. It is in many ways a classic quest tale, except that Julia's holy grail is enticingly metaphorical. It's more than a room of one's own. It's a kind of spiritual transcendence.

Julia is a working-class mother and wife in the Houston suburbs. She works two lousy jobs as a bingo-parlor hostess and phone-book deliverer. She would be beautiful if her face weren't such a wilting map of haggard burden and exhaustion, which tells us all we need to know about her life.

Julia (Cyndi Williams) needs refuge from her soul-corroding routine. Today's modern media overload certainly isn't filling the gaps in a healthful way. The ambient fuzz and chatter of television and radio broadcasts become the film's motifs, a somewhat obvious critique of media oversaturation.

When Julia robs the bingo parlor and hops a jet to New York, her mission, however murky, is set. This classic "lost woman," an almost pre-feminist victim of society, recalls Julianne Moore in "Safe," who endures an unnamed malady that leads her to self-discovery. It isn't too farfetched to compare Julia to Richard Dreyfuss in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," haunted by cryptic signs that point to an eerily nebulous something. (Except Dreyfuss was guided to a UFO jamboree at Devils Tower in Wyoming, and poor Julia gets a moldy warehouse.)

Williams, an Austin stage actor, possesses Julia, as if Henry had written the role for her and she had lived it. It's one-note by design — she exudes a gray, slumpy despair throughout — and Williams' vanity-free performance achieves a startling naturalism. (It also landed her a 2006 Independent Spirit Award nomination for best female lead.)

"Room," which played the 2005 Sundance and Cannes film festivals, is more meditation than entertainment, yet its sure-footed sobriety is powerfully hypnotic. P.J. Raval's moody nocturnal imagery adds layers to the aura of alienation. It's a carefully shaped work unafraid to dwell in the slack, quiet spots. The formal airiness telegraphs Julia's confused wandering, italicizing "Room's" unsettling expressionistic pull.