Me and You and Everyone We Know

Miranda July. The star/writer/director of this movie. Before I even touch the movie, she is amazing, she is on her way, and she is the next big thing, I can feel it in my bones. She's a performance artist, and plays a version of herself in the movie. If this woman keeps making movies, watch out. They'll all be awesome.

Me and You and Everyone We Know is a story about a recently divorced shoe salesman trying to reconnect with his two sons, a performance artist that is pursuing him romantically while trying to get recognized, and a few other people in between. Every character in this movie is so lovable, that the story almost doesn't matter - which is good, because ultimately there isn't much of one.

The movie is a series of small events tied together, and they form a big picture of these people's lives without going into grand gestures of romance or heroic acts - much like the real world. To me, this makes the story very sincere, and almost MORE romantic than the fiction we're all used to.

The music is great, the cinematography is great, and the acting/directing is wonderful. I love everything about this movie, and there are loads of great one liners about life and love that make you want to pause the movie just to think, but you can't, because it's just too interesting.

And that's what makes the movie most appealing - the sense of watching completely ordinary love happen, ordinary lust happen, ordinary art, aging, and childhood...it's all so completely ordinary, and we don't see that enough in films. I think it's the first time I've seen love happen on film almost exactly the way it happens in reality.

I mean, there's enough fiction there to make it better than staring at a stranger for two hours, I mean it's not like you're sitting there watching a security monitor at the mall or anything - but there's enough reality to make it feel real and true to life -it makes me to want to know the people I'm watching.

All in all, my only complaint about the movie is that the story is left quite unresolved for many of the characters. I don't mind inferring the future lives in a 'happily (or not) ever after" sense of things, but with this movie you feel like you're left wanting to see more of these people's lives. We get to see many inciting incidents, things that change characters and people, but we don't get to see HOW they change and what they become in the end after all lessons are learned.

I think it's important for a film not to leave you hanging too much, and while I didn't have that feeling personally, I can see where many people could leave the theater saying, "well, THEN what happened!?" and that sucks.

If you liked the Royal Tenenbaums, Broken Flowers, or Lost in Translation, you'll like this movie, too, I'm betting.