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Film

Indie Flicks: Tedium flecked with flickers

By STEVE PERSALL
Published July 21, 2005

Me and You and Everyone We Know (R) (90 min.) - I have a feeling that Miranda July is a lot like the woman she plays in her filmmaking debut; a performance artist (that says a lot right there) whose eloquently shallow bohemian Zen is the kind of conversation I move away from in galleries and coffee shops. At least that's the impression left by her pointlessly unsavory slice of life. Make that a sliver.

July probably admires the adolescent decadence of Larry Clark's films and the absurd nothingness of Todd Solondz, judging from her structuring of Me and You and Everyone We Know. She imitates their themes with vignettes that 30 years ago would have been compared to Jules Feiffer's mordant cartoons; life's little embarrassments separating winners and losers. There are nuggets of clarity in July's film during which a line of dialogue or a silent gaze say everything she has to offer. But we slog through a lot of tedious, tasteless material getting there.

July plays Christine Jesperson, someone who probably has a smarter impression of life than her oddball art - narrating imaginary conversations over strangers' photographs - would suggest. She's lonely, and we understand why. Richard Swersey (John Hawkes) is just becoming the same way, kicked to the curb by his wife and disconnected from his two sons, 14-year-old Peter (Miles Thompson) and 7-year-old Robby (Brandon Ratcliffe). If those were everyone we know in the movie, it might have been a competently quirky romance. July has more on her mind, in theory, if not practice.

Peter experiments with Internet sex chat rooms, with Robby by his side. Neither knows anything about sex; when pressed by an anonymous e-pal for a description of a preferred act, Peter and Robby use childish scatology to reply. Later, Robby does his own messaging, cutting and pasting words into some stranger's turn-on. Meanwhile, Peter is used as an sexual guinea pig by two budding Lolitas (Natasha Slayton, Najarra Townsend) who are seriously contemplating the advances of Richard's adult co-worker (Brad William Henly).

The pedophilic undertones of Me and You and Everyone We Know never gain the insight Solondz did, for example, in Happiness. They shock, but don't enlighten; they are a tease that we don't want to see carried out but which could be worthwhile if July had more than wry blackout punch lines planned. You don't need to be prudish to catch a whiff of exploitation, regardless of what doesn't happen.

July's grownups, especially Richard, are better defined by the screenplay's understatement. Hawkes' performance is quite good, with his hollowed eyes and careless grooming. Richard is the only character with any personal arc, although he doesn't feel like doing much to shape it. He and Christine make a nice couple through mutual desperation: a tough theme to sell, but Hawkes holds up his end of the deal.

Me and You and Everyone We Know won inexplicable acclaim at the Sundance and Cannes film festivals, where its avant-garde superficiality probably inspired a lot of one-upmanship among people trying to sound smarter than everyone else. Maybe I'm missing something, but I won't try again to figure it out. C-

[Last modified July 20, 2005, 09:58:07]