The Future

Saw The Future, a Miranda July film. Miranda July specializes in overly sincere, treacly movies loaded with off-putting art-house strangeness. The film opens with the strange, creaky, pitch-adjusted voice of a cat narrating how it was saved by two humans and brought to a "cage-atorium" which was "not cool." It's so weird that I didn't even know whether to start rolling my eyes or to begin anticipating something great. This pretty much describes the entire film. Its plot follows a guy and girl who have been dating for a few years now and believe they'll spend their lives together. She is a dance instructor for children and he is tech-support. Neither one of them are really happy with their lives and feel they are full of untapped potential, that they are capable of beautiful things. The cat that they save becomes the symbol of this untapped beauty. Like their raw emotions, it's wild but can perhaps be tamed.

This is somewhat muddled however, by the alien actions of the protagonists. She is so painfully awkward that sometimes she stands around corners in order to talk to her boyfriend. He changes jobs to become a door-to-door salesman and pours his heart out to complete strangers. His monologues are disjointed and touching, but clearly he should be medicated. There's a scene where the girlfriend wants to make a video of herself dancing beautifully to her favorite music. She hits record on her laptop, puts on an outfit and tries to make the beauty happen. The video that results however looks sad and awkward, like a strange woman flailing about in an empty room. The beauty that she was so sure was there fails to manifest. It's a deeply personal and sad moment. Later on, she puts her legs through the arm-holes of a tee-shirt and pulls it completely over her head, making herself look like a long-legged yellow ghost with a neck-hole vagina. I feel for her, but she's very clearly insane.

This film is definitely not for everyone. I think I'm kind of under Miranda July's sway though. I love her films, even though they are off-putting and freaky. Many actual reviewers rightly call her out for her reliance on the quirky and the cutesy-poo. They are repulsed more than beguiled by her high-school-poetry-level over-sharing and sincerity, calling it precious and twee. I see their points and even agree with them, but I love her all the same. Yes, she's crazy and bizarre, but she's essentially a good person and only ever wants to be understood. Her madness is refreshing and her transparent insecurities validate my own. She's like a giant beating heart, complete with floppy tube-veins and white, fatty tissue. It's telling, I think, that she reminds me of (a much crazier version of) some of my closest friends. There's some imperfection here which I resonate with.