Me and You and Everyone We Know is one of those movies, like Ghost World or Garden State, that seeks to view everyday life through a gently warped prism. The characters are presented as ordinary people, but the point-of-view is faintly twisted, and the feeling we get is of weird spiritual undercurrents flowing beneath the deceptively plain, work-a-day exterior, of small things taking on a larger, vaguely mysterious significance.
The principals are a pair of hopeless lonely-hearts: Richard (John Hawkes), a shoe-salesman who has recently separated from his wife, and Christine (Miranda July), a goof-ball visual artist who makes her living driving old people around town (she only seems to have one client though, a nice old fellow named Michael). It could be a match made in heaven, but first they have to break out of their own particular malaises. Writer/director Miranda July views her characters as people hovering on the precipice of some major life-change, who just need a little nudge to go howling over the edge. Christine, the artist, is certainly ready for an adjustment of circumstances; she tries submitting her nutty audio-visual art-works, little one-woman plays about the difficulties of romance she video-tapes, to a local museum, and busies herself in the meantime worming her way none-too-delicately into Richard's life (she stakes out the shoe-store, then brazenly climbs into his car). The problem is that Richard, still traumatized at being separated, is not quite ready to accept her. Desperate for acknowledgment from his ineffectual wife Pam and inattentive kids Robby and Peter, Richard douses his own hand with lighter fluid and sets it on fire. The damaged hand thereafter becomes a metaphor for Richard's wounded heart, which is just waiting for the bandages to be removed.
The movie has the quality of something that's been lived with for a long time; you get the feeling that Miranda July has been thinking about these characters and situations for years, and has honed her ideas to a fine edge. The result is a certain narrative and thematic confidence: the story builds logically, almost systematically, and the themes seem to spring from the situations without July having to worry them to life. This outward self-assurance is contrasted by the nervousness that suffuses the film, the sense of modern life as a perilous proposition. The film's essential character is best embodied by Christine, who is simultaneously bold and self-doubting. July plays her as a sweet, thoughtful kook whose aspirations force her to overcome her guardedness, her fear of screwing up. This is doubtless autobiographical, but July deserves credit for not lingering in typical self-absorbed indie fashion on her own hang-ups, and for at least attempting to branch out into more ambitious, all-encompassing thematic territory. Though the film revolves mainly around Richard and Christine, it's really an ensemble piece (me and you and EVERYONE we know). July peers into the lives of her characters and discovers an assortment of quirks, proclivities and obsessions (the funniest instance: a young girl named Sylvie who eschews normal pre-pubescent fascinations in favor of filling a hope-chest with appliances). Some of what July uncovers is a tad on the dark side (the exchanges between Richard's little son Robby and an anonymous chat-room sleaze are uncomfortable yet hilarious, and the punch-line is priceless), but she doesn't go for particularly dark shadings. The tone she achieves is a fragile one, nothing like the mocking heaviness of Todd Solondz, another director who seeks to view real life through a distorting lens. The difference is in the level of distortion; Solondz wants freakishness, where July is content with gentle eccentricity.
That gentle eccentricity is the movie's long-suit; it's a soft-sell picture, none of your high-toned pontification, and none of your cheap melodrama dressed up with indie earnestness. There are times when its quirky, faintly ironic sense of humor falls flat (the scene where Christine worries inordinately over the fate of a goldfish happens before we realize where the movie's coming from, and just seems stupid), and its dialogue is sometimes trite, but July is so sure of where she wants to take it that it eventually collects itself, and the early sense of scattered energy dissipates. It might be a bit too cute, too neat in the way things resolve, but it has such a singular personality, such a unique sense of what it feels like to live in the modern world, that it overcomes its not inconsiderable faults, and leaves a definite impression.
The principals are a pair of hopeless lonely-hearts: Richard (John Hawkes), a shoe-salesman who has recently separated from his wife, and Christine (Miranda July), a goof-ball visual artist who makes her living driving old people around town (she only seems to have one client though, a nice old fellow named Michael). It could be a match made in heaven, but first they have to break out of their own particular malaises. Writer/director Miranda July views her characters as people hovering on the precipice of some major life-change, who just need a little nudge to go howling over the edge. Christine, the artist, is certainly ready for an adjustment of circumstances; she tries submitting her nutty audio-visual art-works, little one-woman plays about the difficulties of romance she video-tapes, to a local museum, and busies herself in the meantime worming her way none-too-delicately into Richard's life (she stakes out the shoe-store, then brazenly climbs into his car). The problem is that Richard, still traumatized at being separated, is not quite ready to accept her. Desperate for acknowledgment from his ineffectual wife Pam and inattentive kids Robby and Peter, Richard douses his own hand with lighter fluid and sets it on fire. The damaged hand thereafter becomes a metaphor for Richard's wounded heart, which is just waiting for the bandages to be removed.
The movie has the quality of something that's been lived with for a long time; you get the feeling that Miranda July has been thinking about these characters and situations for years, and has honed her ideas to a fine edge. The result is a certain narrative and thematic confidence: the story builds logically, almost systematically, and the themes seem to spring from the situations without July having to worry them to life. This outward self-assurance is contrasted by the nervousness that suffuses the film, the sense of modern life as a perilous proposition. The film's essential character is best embodied by Christine, who is simultaneously bold and self-doubting. July plays her as a sweet, thoughtful kook whose aspirations force her to overcome her guardedness, her fear of screwing up. This is doubtless autobiographical, but July deserves credit for not lingering in typical self-absorbed indie fashion on her own hang-ups, and for at least attempting to branch out into more ambitious, all-encompassing thematic territory. Though the film revolves mainly around Richard and Christine, it's really an ensemble piece (me and you and EVERYONE we know). July peers into the lives of her characters and discovers an assortment of quirks, proclivities and obsessions (the funniest instance: a young girl named Sylvie who eschews normal pre-pubescent fascinations in favor of filling a hope-chest with appliances). Some of what July uncovers is a tad on the dark side (the exchanges between Richard's little son Robby and an anonymous chat-room sleaze are uncomfortable yet hilarious, and the punch-line is priceless), but she doesn't go for particularly dark shadings. The tone she achieves is a fragile one, nothing like the mocking heaviness of Todd Solondz, another director who seeks to view real life through a distorting lens. The difference is in the level of distortion; Solondz wants freakishness, where July is content with gentle eccentricity.
That gentle eccentricity is the movie's long-suit; it's a soft-sell picture, none of your high-toned pontification, and none of your cheap melodrama dressed up with indie earnestness. There are times when its quirky, faintly ironic sense of humor falls flat (the scene where Christine worries inordinately over the fate of a goldfish happens before we realize where the movie's coming from, and just seems stupid), and its dialogue is sometimes trite, but July is so sure of where she wants to take it that it eventually collects itself, and the early sense of scattered energy dissipates. It might be a bit too cute, too neat in the way things resolve, but it has such a singular personality, such a unique sense of what it feels like to live in the modern world, that it overcomes its not inconsiderable faults, and leaves a definite impression.