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review: The debut feature film from hipster artiste extraordinaire Miranda July, Me And You And Everyone We Know is populated with awkward, lonely misfits searching for connection, and creates a world where the line between the mundane and the extraordinary is a hazy smudge.
Christine (July) is a lonely multimedia artist who finds herself drawn to Richard (Hawkes), a shoe salesman and newly-separated father of two boys: Peter, a young teen (Miles Thompson), and Robby, who is six (Brandon Ratcliff). They are surrounded and interconnected by an ensemble of the people in their lives: Christine's Eldercab client; Richard's co-worker and his estranged wife; neighbors, including two sexually curious teenage girls; an overly rigid museum curator; and my personal favorite character, the boys' schoolmate Sylvie (Carlie Westerman), a young girl whose pumpkin-headed seriousness and premature maturity make her like a live-action Peanuts character.
July deftly maintains an air of wide-eyed innocence throughout the film, even when dealing with squicky sexual subject matter, and potentially creepy characters ultimately come across as sympathetic. Despite some gentle satire here and there (I have to wonder if Christine's experiences in the art world reflect July's own), July never mocks or exploits her characters, even when they flail awkwardly at their own lives: Richard burns his hand in a vain effort to prove that he's a "cool dad;" Christine's pursuit of Richard is borderline stalking; and the same boredom that leads the two boys to spend hours creating ASCII art on their computer also leads them to troll adult chat rooms, where Robby's childish poop talk unwittingly attracts the attention of a budding fetishist. The direction is delicate and the acting is uniformly understated; the characters are quirky but their idiosyncracies are downplayed, making them more human and relatable. The child actors are particularly good, especially Brandon Ratcliff as Robby. There are many moments of off-kilter charm and lots of memorable dialogue, and the film's climactic scenes are some of the most awkward, hilarious, and touching moments I've seen on screen. This film has received a fair amount of critical hype, which may create immodest expectations. It does not wear its ambitions on its sleeve, but it is a remarkable little gem of a movie, and is definitely the most memorable film I've seen so far this year. (mike.07.05)
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