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Helen M Jerome reviews
- Cert:
- Running time: 91 minutes
- Year: 2005
- Released: 19th August 2005
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
Written and Directed by:
- Miranda July
(Sundance Special Jury Prize 2005)
Producer:
- Gina Kwon
(The Good Girl)
Director of Photography:
- Chuy Chavez
(Chuck & Buck)
Music Score:
- Michael Andrews
(Donnie Darko, Orange County)
Cast:
- Ellen: Ellen Geer
Richard Swersey: John Hawkes
Andrew: Brad William Henke
Christine Jesperson: Miranda July
Shamus: Jordan Potter
Robby: Brandon Ratcliff
Chad: Jason A Rice
Heather: Natasha Slayton
Peter: Miles Thompson
Rebecca: Najarra Townsend
Sylvie: Carlie Westerman
The very words ‘Performance Artist’ can strike fear into the hearts of many viewers.
Something worthy, possibly unpalatable, probably dreary, yet ultimately empty is expected. But multitalented Miranda July might just be the artist to change our preconceptions with her debut feature film, Me & You & Everyone We Know. The movie is creating the biggest buzz since leftfield hits Lost In Translation and Donnie Darko and was made for a fraction of their budgets. And yet it is a relentlessly mesmerizing treat, boasting a couple of the very best child performances you’ll ever witness.
July is the writer, director and star of this small drama about loneliness, isolation and art in the 21st Century, and she clearly knows these subjects well. She plays part-time cab driver and would-be artist Christine Jesperson, who sets her heart on equally lonely shoe salesman Richard Swersey, the sort of guy who sets his hand on fire as a cry for help.
His two young sons, Robby and Peter, are also at sea in a world of dodgy internet chatrooms and local girls seeking new experiences. And Richard’s mouthy colleague and the town’s art curator are caught in the middle of a world they can’t connect with. Fortunately, they pull away from ill-advised liaisons in the nick of time, plunging back into parallel, yet similarly self-imposed isolations.
Weird scenes inside this goldmine of a film stay with the viewer long afterwards, like the goldfish teetering on the roof of a car going along a highway, the strange pictures the boys create by printing rows of punctuation from their computer, and the household objects being gradually collected by junior homemaker Sylvie.
Miranda July clearly has the world at her feet and should have the studios queuing up to produce her imaginative fare instead of their increasingly identikit projects and mindless remakes. But she might want to keep making films about something and on her terms. Whatever she chooses, she¹s certainly one to watch. And keep an eye out for those talented child actors, Brandon Ratcliff and Carlie Westerman.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.