Director: Miranda July
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 2.0
There are some moments of beauty in this surprise sensation by Miranda July, but she's so consumed with herself (she's a hipster de facto) and her woe-is-us worldview so questionable she's like Todd Solondz after a Valium and a cup of coffee. It's like a see-saw of goodness and outright phoniness: the blow-job-on-the-bed and the bench-in-the-park scenes are admittedly poignant (if creepy), yet with them you also get July making her junky feminist video art, a father setting his own hand on fire, the line "You think you deserve that pain, but you don't," the other line, "Soup won't be computerized," art house slippers and of course the poop that gets exchanged from ass to ass for all eternity. John Hawkes is just respectable enough to avoid being an Al Bundy clone and I shuddered every time Carlie Westerman was on screen, her character dreaming of a world where she's a mother with children (and she's only a child herself) - I fully expect both performers to find a good deal of work after this. But goodness aside, let's be a little honest: if this received the kind of mass attention and an Academy Award like American Beauty did, the 'poetic' moments like the fish-in-the-bag would attain the same kind of 'joke notoriety' as the 'beautiful' floating plastic bag that so completely enraptured Wes Bentley. As a matter of fact, Wes Bentley's character in American Beauty and July would make a great couple.
