Cinema Crazed

Buy This Film

2005

Rated: R for strong sexual content, graphic language, and violence.

Genre: Arthouse Drama Romance Comedy

Directed By: Miranda July

Running Time: 1:30

Review by: Felix Vasquez Jr.

Review Date: 2/13/07

Special Features:
None.

ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW

I think Miranda July is my new hero. She’s sort of brilliant, she’s adorable, and man, her film “Me and You…” has such subtle shades of sheer honesty, that I was breathe taken. Can you expect no less from a performance artist? Take for example the scene where Peter asks Sylvie about her hope chest. It’s quite possibly my favorite scene in all of film history (Hyperbole, folks, hyperbole). Barnone. Because it’s powerful. It’s sad. It’s fucking honest, and it speaks waves about life. Examine that scene. Know what it means. “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” is about people. People seeking to connect in a world where we’re isolated from one another. It’s about people trying to make their marks in the world and not feel completely vulnerable, while also anxiously seeking human connection. “Everything in the world will be computerized,” a saleswoman tells the character Sylvie.

“Not soup,” she replies, “Soup is a liquid.” July’s screenplay is almost like poetry at times, and poetry you just have to sit on for a while to understand. That’s the best kind, because there’s always that reward. July explores how human contact is now mostly simulated through computers, and art, and impersonal expressions, while the characters here seek the opposite. Human contact is so rare these days. And every character here has no idea how to connect, and are sometimes afraid of it.

Because it allows us to feel vulnerable and exposed. July, an artist who writes, sings, and engages in surreal performance art, composes “Me and You and Everyone…” less like a film and more like tiny pieces of beautiful art compiled into a film. It’s an acquired taste, there’s no doubt about that. Some people will hate how there’s really no solid conflict, or story arc, yet some people will utterly love it. In its form, it’s a tale of many different people seeking some form of connection to someone else. John Hawkes is a shoe salesman who prefers not to engage with his customers too much, and seeks to become close with his two sons, his oldest is a boy who is adventurous in sex, and is used as a guinea pig for two vain teen girls, while the youngest Robby, is corresponding with a possible online predator, a sub-plot that ends… well, you’ll see.

July’s sub-plot is possibly the most engaging. She seeks to be connected to Hawkes’ character, while seeking her big break in an upcoming art show. She finds herself in a rather disappointing confrontation with the agent running the show, and teaches her a lesson about face to face conflict. July is utterly adorable, and yet doesn’t hog the screen. She’s featured in a rather minimal role when compared to the plot of Hawkes and his sons. But in its utterly sophisticated yet simplistic, “Me and You and Everyone We Know” makes its point with an original film that destroys the conventions of a typical story.

I really admire what July’s debut film has to offer to the medium of filmmaking, because it has a deep message about humanity, and intimacy and the lack thereof in our society. Great performances, and a beautiful screenplay make “Me and You and Everyone We Know” worthy of the attention.

Have something to say about this review? Pop on over to Cinema-Lunatics
and speak your mind in our Answer Back! Forums >>