movie of the day: Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)

the DVD for You and Me and Everyone We Know starts with the films rating, in bright blue, with the reasoning for its “R” rating:

For disturbing sexual imagery involving children

of course, this elicited a reaction from my wife:

“what the fuck sort of movie are we watching, anyway?”

of course, with the draconian way the MPAA rates films, it makes sense that they would describe the situation this way. heaven forbid that a child say something that is misconstrued in a sexual way by someone who doesn't even know that the speaker is a child. or that a teenager get a blow job from another teenager (because we know that never happens, right?) i'm surprised the MPAA just let this movie get away with an "R" rating.

but i'm getting off track.

at one point about half way through the movie, my wife said, "this is just like that movie where the kid says he's going to rape that girl after school." the movie she was referring to was Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse.

i couldn't have made a more astute observation.

there were times when watching Miranda July's debut feature film that i thought of Solondz. her world is a world populated by nothing but outsiders, people trying to find a way to connect to the rest of the world and always seeming to fall short. and in those rare instances when a connection is made, it is excrutiatingly painful to watch.

like Solondz, July is willing to flirt with taboos to get her point across. take the six year old mentioned above in reference to the rating. at one point in the movie, he and his brother are playing around in chat rooms. they are passing the time being sent between one parent and another, neither of whom have any time for their kids. the older brother knows about the seedy underbelly of such a chat line and explains to his brother that the person messaging them is probably a man, and that they should make up some perversion to yank the chatter's chain. the six year old, having no concept of sexuality, suggests "pooping back and forth, forever" which i won't describe here. the chatter, however, is not a fake and find scatology arousing, which leads to a strange, but sweet encounter between the two later in the film where nothing sexual takes place.

now i realize that some people may be put off by what i just wrote, but let's face it, July's world is our own. when you look at July's characters, it's a bit like looking in a mirror--we are all outsiders and we are all looking to connect, and such connections can be painful before they can be good, and will always be painful to an extent. even the six year old's concept of pooping back and forth, forever is a connection of sorts--one can only assume that the person receiving the message on the other end is ultimately turned on by the fact that it will be a perpetual connection, no matter the horrific circumstances under which it occurs.

the world is not going to change the horrors that occur in it to jibe with our sensibilities. that's why horrors and pain happen. but there are good things too. when we make a connection that's worthwhile, we should cherish it. we should keep in mind that it's that way for you, and me, and everyone we know. Four Stars (out of Five)