Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Capone's take on a damn great sounding little flick called ME, YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW that has been gathering a lot of heat through the festival circuit for the last few months. He's got me convinced. Sounds like a must-see and thus I must see it! Enjoy!
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here. I love discovering a new filmmaker, whose future seems so bright and clear. Let me tell you my first major contender of 2005...
In addition to being he year documentaries were actually considered mainstream entertainment, 2004 was also the year of the quirk. Films like Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, and even Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind combined strange characters, bizarre humor and genuine emotion to give us some of the year’s best movies. With this in mind, it’s a bit shocking that we’re six months into 2005 with no sign of such films…until now. Allow me to introduce you to Me and You and Everyone We Know, a work that is at times off-putting, but usually quite charming and funny.
Welcome to the mind of writer-director Miranda July, making her debut feature with Me and You. The film follows several tightly connected characters as they weave in and out of each others lives, sometimes doing more harm than good despite the best of intentions. John Hawkes (familiar to fans of HBO’s “Deadwood” as the Jewish hardware store owner) plays department store shoe salesman Richard, a newly separated father of two boys who is attempting to make sense of his collapsed marriage while balancing work and family. In an opening scene, Richard sets his arm on fire mistakenly using lighter fluid instead of alcohol.
The key female in Me and You is Christine, played by July, a performance and video artist working on projects to get shown at the city’s contemporary art gallery. To make money while she creates art, she runs her own taxi service, driving the elderly around town. Christine is a character who is often pathetic and adorable at the same time. Because her life is virtually empty outside of her art, she involves herself deeply in the lives of those in her vehicle. One day while taking a client to buy new shoes, she meets Richard and, for no discernable reason, falls for him. Richard isn’t the best-looking guy and his fragile persona doesn’t help make it any clearer why this attractive (albeit ill-dressed) woman would take a liking to him. Much of the film is devoted to their tumultuous attempts to begin a relationship. He’s still reeling from his breakup, and she’s just weird. It ain’t pretty, but it’s fun to watch.
The sections of Me and You that may bother some audience members involve the younger people in the film. Richard’s shy oldest son (who’s probably 14 or 15) gets in the middle of a contest between two teenage girls about whose oral sex technique is better. The two girls also have sometimes-uncomfortable dealings with an older man who leaves graphic notes in his window about things he’d like to see them do. Richard’s youngest boy (about 6 years old) has utterly freaky Instant Message exchanges with a mystery person. While all of these situations sound a bit dicey, July never enters into Todd Solondz territory, and usually these scenarios end up being very funny. The entire film feels like it was shot on a razor’s edge, and July never lets you quite get comfortable in your surroundings.
As with many of my favorite films, I had not a clue where this movie was headed. I was in no way certain that Richard and Christine would end up together; the film would have worked just as well either way. Early on, July establishes that anything is possible in Me and You, and that’s a rare gift. No character is sacred, although it’s clear she cares deeply for them. Feelings are crushed as easily as they are built up. There’s a wonderfully written scene where Richard and Christine are walking down a sidewalk they have decided will represent the rest of their lives together. It’s a scene that almost guarantees a happy ending to the film. But when Christine jumps into Richard’s car uninvited, he makes it very clear that her advances have gone far enough. The slap that sequence delivered to my face still stings.
All of the actors in Me and You are top-notch, but I have never seen a performance like July gives here. She is spinning around her own sun. When she is happy and excited, you are right there with her. But when she gets hurt, the look on her face so perfectly mirrors the feeling in her heart. It’s a disorienting yet extremely touching display of talent. Even if she never makes it as a director, July could easily carve out a nice career as a staple of romantic comedies…an opportunity she should reject on principle, since she could easily use her abilities to deliver a devastating dramatic read.
Me and You and Everyone We Know is a small gem of a film that will probably take you a while to get accustomed to. It’s odd, there’s no getting around that. But the feeling it leaves you with is so worth the journey. And I can’t remember a time when I felt so certain about the future of a filmmaker or actress as I do about Miranda July.
Capone
