Me and You and Everyone We Know | Review

July gives audiences a reason to go back to the movies with a sympathetic overview of flawed and touching characters.

Far worse than a child with a heightened imagination, is a child with not enough parental supervision. Loneliness among populace is the central theme in this delightful and endearing summer treat about the things that make people tic and the unnecessary and sometimes unknowing distances that we complicated humans create between one another. Multi-media entrepreneur and first-time director Miranda July’s original and honest Me and You and Everyone We Know works itself as a telling and tender portrait of a world where people from a high enough vantage point look all the same.

Weaved together as an ensemble pic where children and adults share equal screen time, levels of connection and disconnection are offered up by way of odd circumstances – department store interactions, internet chat-rooms, video-tape testimonials and shared elevators. July embodies the righteousness and curiosity of an Audrey Tautou’s Amelie – but she remains less of a fairytale creation. A slightly older-looking version of actor D.J Quills in John Hawkes is the guy who wins the girl over – by not winning her over. While the narrative spends time investigating the odd connection between the two – (look for one featured brilliant sidewalk sequence) it also details their individual worlds – July’s Christine as a struggling artist and the sort of girl in a woman’s body and Hawkes’ Richard, as a father in the midst of a midlife crisis with his children finding themselves buoyed to a complicated grown-up world.

While some viewers may never look at the function of the bracket key on the computer keyboard in the same manner, most will find themselves disarmed by the honest point-of-view look into children’s sexuality. The lack of epiphanies or climatic moments doesn’t short change the film, instead July’s symphony of quirkiness is the film’s most arousing characteristic – choice lines (some that remind of some of the character dialogue in PT Anderson’s Magnolia) and choice moments in the screenplay are pasted together giving viewers morsels of offbeat and delicious moments. Set against an omni-present esoteric score – there is a sense that this is the sort of work that is more than the extension of the artist but rather a developed and invested endeavor.

Especially strong is how the film’s frail characters are paired off with one another – with the strongest moments reserved to how July explores the child’s point of view. For those who hailed the collage creation found in Garden State, this is clearly the sort of film where special corky moments, odd-beat characters, situations are delivered with a profound sincerity. Mainstream audiences should definitely stay away from Me and You and Everyone We Know, but for those – and you know who you are will have a sense that they are watching something truly special.

Rating 4 stars