Should see this movie.
Miranda July wrote it, directed it, and plays a young woman who drives an ElderCab and is looking for something else. She finds a man with two young sons who recently separated from his wife. The man wears a quizzical expression most of the time and is perplexed by his situation and concerned with the safety of his beautiful boys. The boys, who are very fine actors in that way that children sometimes have of not appearing to be acting, interact mainly in chat rooms but generally curious about their new neighborhood and the world. They are alternately bedeviled and befriended by the precocious girl next door, who has a growing collection of small appliances in her hope chest, and a couple of teenage chicks who are also exploring new territory emboldened and supported by each other. Part of that territory is inhabited by a young shoe salesman who works with the boys' father, young men who also confide in each other.
See how everything connects with everything else? Loopy, you might say, with plot lines that circle back to other plot lines involving oddly infuriating and endearing characters in unexpected ways. They say things to each other that regular people (not movie characters) would never say - or maybe they would if they could.
July has a lot on her mind. She has crafted a modest film that many people will probably find precious or cute, but don't be numbed to what it offers. There are no big stars, no car crashes, no gun fights, no explosions, no apocalypse. Probably the best film I've seen this year.
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1 comment:
I also liked that strange and funny movie. It maintained an appealing innocence that took the edge off the discomfort created by the boundary-crossing topics. This scene seemed to be at the core of the movie: husband and wife in the bathroom talk about the shirt she is wearing, with a message that affirms her worth, written in backward letters so it can be read in a mirror.
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