2005 comedy
Rating: 17/20
Plot: Christine is a lonely performance artist without an audience. Richard is a recently-divorced shoe salesman with an injured hand. They meet and begin an awkward romance. Richard’s sons, meanwhile, form their relationships on-line until the older kid meets a few of the neighborhood girls. Richard’s coworker, a museum manager, and a guy with a penny are also involved.
I don’t know anything about director and star Miranda July, but I want to see more after this, her feature-length debut. This is such a charmingly odd comedy, and although it’s as quirky as can be, it still manages to be a more honest look at humans and the way they connect and interact than most human dramas we usually get from Hollywood. I always wonder about movies like this where child actors are engaged in behavior or get dialogue that most parents would not want their children involved with. Here, children experiment with fellatio, there are encounters with timid pedophiles, and there’s a six-year-old’s invention (unless I’m just naive) of a new sex act with his typed desire to “poop back and forth.” It doesn’t surprise me that July is an actual performance artist because a lot of what happens on the screen is less about moving any of the number of plots along and more an excuse to take mini visual excursions, whimsical life wrinkles that feel like comical koans. Like, a picture of a bird in a tree sitting in a tree. Or a fish’s last moments in life. Or a knock at a window followed by self-immolation. Or a hamburger wrapper that really is a hamburger wrapper. Or a penny tapping the post of a stop sign. Or the length of a romance covered in a few-blocks walk from work to a parking spot. Or lame ascii art featuring the titular me, the titular you, and the titular everyone. Or a little girl shopping for appliances. Or the gift of a stuffed animal. This movie made me smile, and then it made me smile when I thought about how it made me smile, and then it made me smile again in a way that completely surprised me. It’s all so refreshing, right down to the all-Casio score. This is the kind of movie–maybe a bit too quirky for a lot of people–that I watch and love because it’s not like any other movies. And other movies shouldn’t be like this one. A lot of movies try to nail love or ennui or human interaction or loneliness or countless other human emotions, but it takes a flamboyantly skewed eye like July’s to do it in a way that manages to surprise us or somehow resonates. I think it has something to do with a childlike storytelling quality that it has. This is a beautiful and very funny movie. I can’t wait to see the only other movie she’s directed.
