Me and you and everyone we know

‘Me and you and everyone we know’ written and directed by Miranda July, received mixed reactions across the board. Some hailing it as ‘a quiet masterpiece’, others appeared to frankly detest the whole film. I have to say, I found watching the film not exactly a pleasant experience. As I did when watching Terence Malick’s ‘the Tree of Life’, I felt as though I was being excluded by the film by the fact that, ‘I didn’t really get it’. I often enjoy alternative films, but I just couldn’t see the emperor’s new clothes here.

The plot, a word I’m playing a bit fast and loose with here, focuses around Christine (Miranda July), a cab driver and video artist, trying to get her work displayed at her local gallery and Richard (John Hawkes), a shoe salesman and recently single dad. The two of them eventually end up together, after what seemed like a lifetime of their mishaps and struggles. It was enough to make me want me yell at them through the television screen to ‘get a grip’. The film included a whole other variety of characters though. There was Richard’s neighbour, a little girl who collects kitchen appliances for her ‘dowry’. A rather bleak sentiment, I felt. There was an art gallery curator who liked send dirty messages to whom she hadn’t realised was Richard’s young son (creepy). The was also Richard’s colleague at the shoe shop, a man who leaves sexual messages for two teenage girls to see, about what he’d ‘do to them’ (creepier). The art gallery served nicely as a metaphor for the film whole pretentiousness. Like the scene where an artist puts a hamburger wrapper on the ground and calls it art, they apparently filmed some weirdo’s stumbling around and called it a film.

Overall, I feel the film had an effect of indie blandness, the jokes weren’t funny and the characters had no likeability. I didn’t understand why the characters acted in such a bizarre acted way. For example, there was a scene in which Richard sets is hand on fire, this apparently an act to represent his turmoil into despair and his struggle to stay afloat, but wasn’t it just an incredibly stupid and irresponsible thing to do? The film especially awful, it just didn’t do it for me. It made me realise why I love socially realistic films, because they’re about real people, with real problems, and these are dealt with. However, this film won awards at the Cannes and the Sundance film festivals, so what do I know.