Me and You And ...

Tonight, we watched a DVD of "Me and You and Everyone We Know". This film was written by, directed by and starring performance artist Miranda July. After the movie was over, I felt baffled. I think I liked it, but I am not sure why and I am not sure what the movie was about. I turned to my wife and raised my eyebrows. She replied, "I really liked that movie." I asked her why. She says, " I don't know, I can't put it into words."

I turned to critics (who generally gave the movie very high reviews). Roger Ebert writes, "It's a comedy about falling in love when, for you, love requires someone who speaks your rare emotional language. Yours is a language of whimsy and daring, of playful mind games and bold challenges. Hardly anybody speaks that language, the movie suggests -- only me, and you, and everyone we know, because otherwise we wouldn't bother knowing them."

Carina Chocano from the LA Times, writes "Miranda July's gorgeously loopy "Me and You and Everyone We Know" is made up of moments like these: nonsequiturs that make perfect sense, banal images that turn transcendent on a dime, casual exchanges that suddenly seem to encompass the entirety of human relationships."

Neither of these reviews make much sense to me, however they also sound very right to me! I wonder if that is more a statement about me rather than the movie? I have always considered myself a logical person. You do not have to go much farther than the title of this blog to see this. On the other hand, I can be rather dense on emotional issues. Anyway, I think this is one of those movies that speaks to you on an emotional level rather than a logical level. As a result, I am the worst person to tell you why this is a good movie. If I don't understand it myself, how can I explain it to anyone else? I just have to say I think I liked the movie and leave it at that.


Oh heck, I can say more that that. The movie is full of quirky characters that seemed very real. They are coping with frustrations, confusion, self-doubts and rejection. One of the themes of the movie seems to be that everyone has to deal with these emotions. Relationships are hard, there are many barriers to connecting with others in the modern world. However it is important for one to pursue the relationships that are important to you. They won't all work out, but it should not be for lack of trying.

Furthermore, relationships rarely follow straight logical paths. When someone turns away from you that does not neccessarily meant that they are rejecting you, and when someone moves towards you that does not neccessarily mean that they want to connect with you. This behaviour is confusing, this movie is confusing, this review is confusing, but that is the way that life is.

It should be noted that this movie is rated R for "for disturbing sexual content involving children." But like most things in this movie, it is not that simple. Ebert describes the sexual content like this "but the one thing it isn't is disturbing". Chocano says, "More funny than disturbing, and nothing too graphic."