Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know is a marvelous movie about the difficulty of connecting in an era when every attempt at communication seems to be pushed away. The central relationship is that between Christine, a lonely video artist (played by July), and Richard (John Hawkes), a recently separated shoe salesman, but we also meet a dozen or so other characters who surround them.
There's the gallery owner who refuses to let Christine deliver a tape of her work by hand ("It's better if you mail it to this address," she says; Christine looks at the card she's been given and says, "But that's here..."); Richard's co-worker, who enjoys the fantasy of being a dirty old(er) man than the reality; a pair of senior citizens whom Christine drives back and forth for visits at one of their nursing homes; a teenage girl who is carefully assembling her hope chest (and refers to its contents as "my dowry"); and Richard's sons, 14-year-old Peter and 7-year-old Robbie, each of whom finds himself caught up in the fantasies of others.
Me and You is rated R for "disturbing sexual content involving children," but July has written and filmed the scenes in question in a completely non-exploitative fashion, and there is a surprising sense of delicacy and innocence about them; the movie deserves its R, certainly, but I didn't find anything "disturbing" about its content.
It's hard to talk about the specific plot details of the movie, because much of it sounds utterly bizarre taken out of context, and descriptions would risk making it sound like some freakshow, like a happier Todd Solondz movie. But the tone of Me and You is so precise that while some of the events are admittedly weird, they always feel comfortably within the realm of possibility; they feel natural, if not entirely normal.
July's writing is poetic without being precious or cutesy. A conversation in which Richard and Christine turn their walk of a few blocks into a metaphor for their relationship crackles with the joy of people who've finally found someone who understands them; the impending death of a goldfish provides one of the movie's funniest scenes.
Me and You and Everyone We Know is a delight, and Miranda July is a major new talent to watch.
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