I first laid eyes on Judy Greer in 1999’s Jawbreaker, in no small number of ways an execrable film. But even in her handful of scenes in support, she left an impression. Here, I recall musing, was a performer who possessed both thoughtfulness and purposefulness, as well as superb comedic timing. Even then, Greer had the ability to communicate a full character, no matter the quality of the movie she was in.

The humorous thing is that blessing/curse been part of the tag on Greer as she’s progressed throughout her career. Of course, she’s stolen scenes in critical favorites (Arrested Development), worked with big, brand-name directors (Spike Jonze, Cameron Crowe, Alexander Payne), and even joined huge franchises (including Halloween and the Marvel Cinematic Universe), it’s true. But Greer hasn’t really had that breakout role that’s led to awards season plaudits. Instead, she’s become known in some circles as a patron saint of redeeming (by degrees) struggling or bad movies.

In some ways, this fate is the ultimate compliment for character actors like Greer. They’re collaborative professionals who know how to hit their mark, and the filmmakers who hire them know they’re getting someone who can breathe additional life, resonance and relevance into supporting parts that sometimes are a bit thin, as written.

This is all worth mentioning because the science-fiction drama Aporia, from writer-director Jared Moshé, gives Greer one of her few front-and-center starring roles, and in turn benefits from the very rooted ambivalence she brings to her character. The Los Angeles-set film’s title refers to a logical impasse and contradiction, or expression of uncertainty, which is at the heart of this speculative, character-driven puzzle-box.

Ever since losing her husband Mal (Eli Gathegi) to a drunk-driving incident, long-term care nurse Sophie Rice (Greer) has been struggling while raising their 11-year-old daughter Riley (Faithe Herman). When her late husband’s best friend Jabir Karim (Payman Maadi), an immigrant cab driver who was a physicist before he came to the United States, reveals that he and Mal were working on a time-bending machine, it presents Sophie with tantalizing hope in the form of a difficult choice.

The machine won’t allow for time travel itself, or even to directly reverse the incident that cost Mal his life. The pair failed in that attempted invention. But Jabir explains that the machine can cause a small reaction with charged subatomic particles, and if that reaction happens within, say, a person, it would kill them. Thus the dramatic hook is baited in the form of a targeted kill machine, given very specific GPS coordinates that can be reliably attached to a specific moment in time.

Without flinching, Sophie says yes to bringing her husband back, at the cost of a man who got behind the wheel while intoxicated. And… it works. Mal returns, and Sophie is caught up in the thrill of this second chance at family life together. In short order, though, complications arise. Jabir, Mal and Sophie form a sort of triumvirate, weighing what to do next with the machine. But when one of them makes the choice to proceed with another test, it changes some of the calculus of their debate.

At the same time, Sophie becomes weighed down by the newly created misfortune visited upon Kara Brinkley (Whitney Morgan Cox), the wife of the man who killed Mal, and her daughter Aggie (Veda Cienfuegos), who is around Riley’s age. A choice about a change there leads to yet another unanticipated consequence, raising thought-provoking questions of family and identity.

From Safety Not Guaranteed to even deeper indie cuts like Bellflower, I’m generally a sucker for weird little movies with DIY machinery and a love of screwing around with genre conventions. Moshé’s film lands loosely in this same bucket, definitionally, but it eschews weirdness and sticks much more to conventional intrigue, mystery (a nice score from composer H. Scott Salinas assists in this regard) and romantic melancholy. It’s a very literary treatment of its concept, in other words.

Viewers may be reminded of a good number of other films while watching Aporia — everything from Shane Carruth’s Prime to Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Heck, for horror fans it might also trigger memories of the recent Birth/Rebirth (now on Shudder), which tackles some of the same themes of grappling with when to let go of family in a much more literal way, and within a very different genre framework.

Thoughts of all these other films don’t represent a dig, though — rather, they merely reflect that Aporia taps into some of the same provocative and stimulating questions that exist around issues of love and loss, and the reach of grief.

Moshé, who got his start by producing the documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son before moving on to helm two solid Westerns, Dead Man’s Burden and The Ballad of Lefty Brown, exhibits a nice command of all the technical storytelling elements; Aporia feels very much of a piece, in its construction.

He also has the very good sense to cast Greer, who delivers a sensitive, highly watchable performance. Still, one is left yearning a bit, however, for one of two things: a movie that really forces all of the action through her character’s perspective, affording Greer a truly grand showcase with a lot more emotional ups and downs, or (in perhaps an even bigger re-think) a reframing of the narrative that pulls its notable third-act twist forward, and drives the movie much farther into the choppy waters of sociopolitical allegory. That, one can’t help but muse, would have been wild.

Housed in a standard Blu-ray case with an accompanying cardboard slipcover, Aporia comes to home video presented in 16:9 widescreen, with a DTS-HD master audio track that honestly, in its dialogue, seems mixed a little low (optional English SDH subtitles mitigate this issue, for anyone who might have a problem). While the menu screen is technically static, it actually pulses a bit (on purpose), and auto-plays after two minutes. Set-up consists of 11 selectable chapter stops, and the movie’s trailer is of course also included — plus additional previews for Well Go USA titles Bad City, Forgotten Experiment and Warhorse One.

The sole bonus feature is 18 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage from the movie’s 17-day production during COVID. A significant part of this footage consists of Moshé, Greer, Gathegi and Maadi detailing both their characters (or in Moshé’s case the overall plot) and the film’s moral/ethical dilemmas in fairly straightforward fashion. Moshé talks some as well about wanting the movie’s visual aesthetic to capture and reflect the real world (a smart decision yet also a function of budget, one has to presume), but hearing from cinematographer-producer Nicholas Bupp on the warmly captured outdoor scenes in particular would’ve been nice. Overall, while this material is attractively presented, something perhaps a bit more abstract would’ve been more interesting and — given the subject matter — a nice artistic fit.