Kajillionaire

Saw Kajillionaire, a delicate and sensitive Maranda July film.  Maranda's whole thing is that she likes sincerity and raw emotions.  Other words for raw are: rough, unprocessed.  The honesty of the emotions in the film are not the same as simplicity.  Often the characters express themselves in bizarre ways or in uncomfortable displays.  In the worst of this, you sometimes feel that the characters need straightjackets immediately.  But at best, it can be sincere and touching and moving.  That's what I felt about this movie: very touched and heart-warmed, but also aware that this is a sort of free-associated fairytale.

The film follows a girl named Old Dolio who is being raised by two grifters.  These are the lowest stakes grifters imaginable though.  They stay until everyone else has left an airplane, for example, to steal the bagged peanuts and inflight magazines.  They talk about items and each other as "tools" to be used.  They are small but they are mercenary and unloving.  Their daughter, Old Dolio, is so unused to touch that she cries in an opening scene, merely when receiving a massage.  In typical July fashion however, she's so sensitive to touch that the masseuse is only hovering her hands above her.  It's both tragic and ridiculous at the same time.

The film is cute and twee.  The grifter parents must return home to mop up pink foam that leaks down from the wall.  Old Dolio herself speaks in a low-pitched, sullen groan, like a cartoon of a teenager.  If you have a desire for realism or even for excitement, this is not the film for you.  This is a film to practice empathy with.  The characters are alien and the world is foreign, but it's our world in a fun-house mirror.  If you try you can recognize something underneath.  Of course it did not do well at the box office.