Me and You and Everyone We Know

Miranda July
2005

Unlike the obnoxiously forced quirkiness that's supposed to pass as charming in Zach Braff's "Garden State," Miranda July's offbeat-yet-sincere world comes from an honest and uncorrupt place. This first feature is incredibly strong and adept, which is not surprising considering July's generally high caliber video and performance art. Her direction of children is as good as anything since David Gordon Green's "George Washington," but unlike Green July entrusts her young actors enough to project her own personal and comic sensibilities on them to create a more cohesive and stylistic story. John Hawkes does an incredible job of being a credibly wounded person who is able to bring touching and humane comedy to his role. July is a great actor simply by being herself in her representation of ultra-lonely-wannabe-artis- with-day-job Christine Jesperson. This portrayal is particularly amusing because her art, while endearingly sincere, can easily be construed as a parody of much of July's video work. As the title suggests "Me and You and Everyone We Know" is one of those multiple character pictures with interweaving stories, but be assured this is the first of those people-interlocking pictures I've seen in a long time that doesn't make me balk disgustedly (at the cheese factor of course). On a final note, pretty much everything I read about this film pre-viewing made a huge deal the teenage/adolescent sexual content. Its quite possible that I'm too young or too liberal to understand this, but I will say that July's treatment of teenage sexuality does not come of as risque or scandalous or anything more noteworthy than the fact that July is willing to treat youthful hanky-panky in the same manner she treats emotional content: with utter heart on sleeve frankness. In my opinion this is truthful than any of that extreme shock bullshit Larry Clark is trying to sell you.

Review By Brett A. Scieszka