Five years after her original debut film Me and You and Everyone We Know revealed a thoughtfully engaging new voice, Miranda July tries to expand her range with the follow-up indie, The Future (not the most accessible or enticing title).
The Future was born as a performance piece July had staged at The Kitchen and other venues in 2007.
Grade: B-
A dark and whimsical exploration of a triangle that challenges viewers as much as it rewards them, the film continues July’s exploraion of the stasis and loneliness of living an unrealized life.
In the interim between her two films, July has worked in video installation and writing short fiction. Her story collection, “No One Belongs Here More Than You,” refined her sensibility and helped sharpen her colorful feel for mood and tone.
As the title suggests, “The Future” is coolly ambiguous and colored by different references that encompass science fiction, magic realism, time travel and the notion of soul transmogrification.
“Have you ever been outside,” is the movie’s opening line, spoken by the unorthodox narrator, a feline called Paw Paw (voiced by July).
Both are torpid and cut off emotionally and given to petty jealousies (in a sharp and telling note, July’s character is obsessed by the viral popularity of a colleague’s YouTube video clip).
Sophie and Jason’s adoption of the cat is meant as a signal of increased responsibilities and decreased selflessness. However, medical complications require that the cat remain in specialized care, and the couple are tasked to return in a month’s time.
Liberated at the thought of 30 days of freedom, Sophie convinces the initially reluctant Jason to strip away the excesses and the unnecessary. She unplugs the Internet and inspires Jason into giving up his dead-end job. Sophie then announces her mission of creating 30 different dances in 30 days, while Jason gets involved in a local green movement.
July is especially convincing at depicting the personal impasses and acute disappointment of living a life that is defined by lingering failure.
The subtlety emerges in the forlorn and sidelong passages, like the way a fallen portrait on the wall reveals a phone number. She is drawn to the ineffable, the slippery and uncontrollable.
One such moment leads to an impulsive act, a phone that ignites an affair with Marshall (David Warshofsky), an older single father of a precocious adolescent daughter (Isabelle Acres).
Sophie is drawn to the strength and competence of Marshall, who’s an entrepreneur. July then intriguingly but quixotically fractures all of that–rather than focusing on the triangle, she spins the work further and further out of balance (and in the process prevents viewers from hgetting involved in her tale).
The remainder of the story shifts between alternate realities that are possibly dreams, imaginings, or Jason’s projection of her new life, which beautifully invoke Jacques Rivette’s modernist classic, Celine and Julie Go Boating. The Rivette reference seems especially apt in the peculiar way July suggests that Jason and Sophie have in fact merged and possibly exchanged their identities.
As a format, video tends personalize the most intimate of details. Even more so than her first feature, “The Future” is an uncanny self-portrait. July mocks her own inability to think or create conventional art (like Sophie’s stunningly unsuccessful attempt to produce her own YouTube clip). Her fearlessness is inseparable from her tender awkwardness.
The resonance of “Me and You” developed out of the terrific ensemble (July showed a strong touch with teenagers). The new film marks a tremendous improvement stylistically and visually. Shot by Nikolai von Graevenitz, the movie is both supple and nimble. The imagery is filled with suggestions of entrapment and defeat.
July also remains alert to new ideas, such as a terrific scene of the lives of her two best female friends fast forward directly in front of her. Their settled and accomplished lives present a stark contrast to her own wanderings and confusion. Even though she is very much in control, July does not monopolize the movie. She is generous with the other actors, especially some beautiful vignettes about Jason’s developing friendship with an older widower (the late Joe Putterlik).
Spoiler Alert:
In the last scene, Jason finds Sophie lingering outside his door, telling her that there is nothing there for her to come back to. They reveal that they had separately attempted to adopt the cat, but learned that it had been euthanized because they didn’t pick it up on time.
World-premiering at the Sundance Film Fest and played at the Berlin Film Fest, the indie was released by Roadside Attractions, but failed to find viewers, earning only $568,290 in the U.S. box office, against a $1 million budget.
Cast
Miranda July as Sophie
Hamish Linklater as Jason
David Warshofsky as Marshall
Isabella Acres as Gabriella
Joe Putterlik as Joe
Angela Trimbur as Dance studio receptionist
Mary Passeri as Animal shelter receptionist
Kathleen Gati as Dr. Straus
Erinn K. Williams as Tammy
Oona Mekas as Sasha
