User reviews

Me and you... is the type of movie that you can come in at any point and get into the characters and the plot.I saw it at the U.S.A. Film Festival in Dallas.I missed the beginning,and I heard a few people walked out because of a soft porn scene.I absolutely loved the movie, the actors were perfect for the parts,all of them. I noticed that I was actually sitting next to John Hawke, who was very a funny, honest character.(He was laughing too)Expect to laugh,laugh,and giggle,I was very impressed.Miranda J. is brilliant,she is a really talented actress, who plays a quirky struggling artist,very funny.This movie touches on things that we think, and feel everyday,but are scared to tell.The characters do a great job of making you feel and love each and every one of them.

For those who like alternative for the sake of alternative, Me, You and Everyone We Know is a show-and-tell of all your favourite subjects. Childhood sexuality, suburbia as Hell, McJobs — it's all here, which makes one wonder how alternative these ideas really are if they keep showing up in so many films (Happiness, Ghost World, Welcome to the Dollhouse). The twist here is that the tone is dreamy rather than dark, which may have the reverse effect of making it more disturbing. I suppose any film that makes you think should be commended, but it's difficult to recommend something you have little emotional connection to. There are some admittedly beautiful moments of film-making — director Miranda July certainly understands the power of an image — but the screenplay tries to juggles too many characters. It drops most of them, and keeping one or two balls in the air in the same time is hardly impressive. Most distracting is the performance of July herself as the zany performance artist. Let's call her a hopeless romantic, emphasis on hopeless. She's really less a leading lady and more of a stalker. Maybe some people confuse this character's behaviour with being an artist, but I think it's a matter of a writer/director/actor biting off more than they can chew. Woody Allen could pull this kind of stuff off, and Ms. July is hardly as august a talent. Contrast her work with that of the lead actor, also a bit of a kook, but a kook who brought something charming to his role. Only desperation on his part could bring these two together. Far more interesting was the story of Richard and his sons. July does a great job of capturing the unpleasantness of this neighbourhood and the toll separation takes on children. It makes them grow up much quicker, exposing them to things they might otherwise have avoided. The actors who play the boys and the girls they interact with are the real revelations in this film, which would have been vastly improved had they focused on them instead. Their scenes of discovery, despite the touchy subject matter, seemed genuine. Rather than scarring them for life, the boys seemed pleased to be learning something since their father was never there for them.

I had the good fortune to see this film last night at a Sundance Film Festival screening in Salt Lake City. Having viewed a few of Miranda July's shorts on her website), I hoped this film would live up to the level set there. It does. July plays the lead character in what turns out to be an ensemble of people, each with his/her own quirks, who are somehow linked together (most simply by being neighbors). This movie is made up of what might be a string of perfect little short films. Each scene builds on the previous scene, adding one more enticing facet to a personality; one more little twist to a story. By the final scene, each character has as much depth and complexity as some of the real people we know. Indeed, one might wish that everyone was as interesting as the characters in this film.

Miranda July's "Me and You and Everyone We Know" might be the most miraculous first fiction feature by an American in 3 or 4 years; it's rivaled only by Andrew Bujalski's "Funny Ha Ha." Christine (July) stalks the recently separated Richard (John Hawkes), who would try anything to impress his kids, and gets third degree burns for his trouble. His elder son, Peter (Miles Thompson) longs for connections that go beyond instant gratification, while the younger Robby (Brandon Ratcliff) gets all the funniest lines, mostly copied and pasted from cybersex chats.

"Me and You" is about the act of pretending and about performance as life, but first of all it's about extremely likable characters played by likable actors, foremost among them July herself, whose Carole Lombard-meets-Laurie Anderson deep ditz may be a complex stack of masks upon masks, but is more likely just the way she is.

The movie is notable for what isn't in it - both malice and pain are almost absent. Removing malice - July's world is one in which a kid can safely walk alone through some seedy parts of Los Angeles - is unfashionable, brave and, given the gentle tone of the piece, necessary. But the absence of pain isn't intentional: July would like us to feel the loneliness of the characters. But their isolation is more a trait of their personalities than a source of suffering. In this respect, the movie is perhaps too glossy for its own good. There's one excellent exception, revolving around a granddaughter's photo by an elderly woman's bedside, which becomes a substitute for a shared life that dissolved too soon.

The scene that everyone picks out is the walk to Tyrone Street. Richard and Christine decide the walk to the intersection will stand in for the relationship they're not having: first the unrelieved joy of being together, then the getting bored with each other, then the fighting and the split. Only they keep chatting flirtily, about whether the walk represents a year and a half or twenty, until they get to the corner, and then we wonder how they can possibly go their separate ways. Although this is as great as anything in the first 75 minutes of "Before Sunset," its emphasis is much more on romantic comedy than the rest of the movie. There are more typical scenes that approach this quality. A goldfish on the roof of a car. A child running his fingers through a woman's hair. A picture of a bird in a tree, in a tree. And the ending, where it seems human actions are motivating the sunrise.

The scene I consider the finest is a quiet one: Sylvie (Carlie Westerman), a tween spending her childhood preparing for life as a homemaker, gets a gift from Peter: a plush bird. ("It's for your daughter.") It would be unusual merely for depicting a platonic friendship between kids of different genders and different ages. But it's remarkable for crystallizing what it seems every filmmaker is trying to say these days: that there's something to be gained from thinking like a child. Through July's lens, it doesn't seem like a regression: no redundant literalization of fantasy is necessary. The achievement of "Me and You and Everyone We Know" is to show how the mundane moments of our lives can be mundanely transformed by imagination.

I just saw this film in Cannes, and Miranda July just won the Camera D'Or for best first feature. I think the jurors were right on for giving this film an award. It's a simple film that creates identifiable and likable characters that are all loosely connected. I suppose there is one central story line, but the film's strength lies in the individual scenes and interactions between these characters. July successfully depicts the innocence of childhood, the sexual curiosity of teenagers, and the complex emotions of adulthood through personal and original stories and situations. I don't want to give a lot away but simply recommend anyone reading this to at least give it a shot. You'll either love it or hate it, but I think the majority of you will love it.

No one talks or acts like a human being for huge parts of this movie BUT there are some really true moments stuck inside of the overly awkward and weird stilted dialogue. It can occasionally feel like it's trying WAY too hard to be "Art" and slip in to hardcore pretentiousness, but after a while, you sort of get into the style and it starts to work. I'm not sure it's as great as people would like to say it is, but for something different, it does have some charm

I really loved this film! All the way from the beginning it surprised me at every scene, it was very funny and did not try to overdo its humor, and the characters are unforgettable. To be honest, so many expressions and individual ideas that are conveyed in this movie through its characters, it's kind of hard to pin point what I loved most. It is a sexual film, probably not suitable for the young, but it portrays people as they are, something that we find awkward and strange in this movie - they all exist around us in real life and this film is not afraid to show it. Ultimately we all look for love. In this film, even the strange moments are romantic.

The film stitches together a tapestry of characters who are loosely connected, but not meant to serve any great purpose. We are meant to appreciate the little slices of life they all offer, sometimes funny, sometimes sweet, sometimes a bit disturbing. This disjointed anti-plot often falls short of being totally riveting, but there's a certain sincerity to the film that keeps it likeable in spite of itself. It's low key but off beat enough to keep you interested, and the characters are quirky but relatable enough to keep you invested in their low stakes shenanigans.

i had the supreme pleasure of seeing this film last night as the grand opener of the seattle international film festival. (this was the first time in the 31 year span of the festival that the opener was directed by a woman!) i loved it! contrary to some previous comments, i found the writing and the approach to the subject matter very adult. a less mature screenwriter could have too easily fallen into a dour and pessimistic mood given the subject matter, especially the instances of desires pedophilia and families torn apart. i think it takes a remarkable, mature writer and director to take these themes and turn them into a heart-warming piece of work rather than just another fatalistic, world-hating film.

the performances were stellar across the board. every character was completely fleshed out and truly human. i think that's what struck me the most about this film, the complete humanity of it. the title is apt, it really is a universal story of you and me and everyone we know. the comedy didn't have to be forced, it was funny because we could all identify and sympathize with the awkwardness of life.

i'd love to see more out of miranda july to this caliber. this was a huge feat for a first feature, but i have a lot of hope and faith in her talents for the future.

Highly acclaimed debut film from Miranda July, who also stars as Christine, an eccentric but sweet artist who falls for a newly separated shoe-salesman. It's a frustrating film which fluctuates between moments of genuine sweetness as the various characters reach out to each other for love and affection, or even simple human interaction, but it also has some horribly self-conscious, pretentious moments. The actors are all pretty good, but the film just has that forced quirkiness you too often see in US indie cinema - from the music, to the light and airy visual style, the clever-clever dialogue and slightly controversial events involving children.

It's worth a watch if you like off-beat stuff like "Happiness", "Punch-Drunk Love", "Napoleon Dynamite" etc but, unfortunately, it's not as satisfying as any of those.

This movie tries so hard to be original that it ends up losing all focus. It's just a collection of weird scenes that don't lead anywhere and don't contain any sort of message. I found the sexually charged scenes particularly disturbing as they always involve minors, mostly having very explicit conversations with middle-aged people. There's no point to it and I suspect it was only retained for it's schock-value (Spoiler alert : I really don't need to see a six year old boy discussing scatophilia). Very few characters are likeable because most of them don't feel human. I usually love "oddballs" in movies but there's nothing moving about them here. They're just weird for the sake of being quirky. The whole thing feels forced and doesn't bother to tell and kind of story. Only a couple of scenes were actually endearing but cut short by off-puting exchanges. What a shame.

Miranda July's debut film is, at heart, a student film. The themes and characters are not as fully developed as they could be and, in part, this could be due to the sheer number of characters she has. The film follows two handful of characters in their interactions and search for a true connection.

Why is it a student film? Perhaps, it is the lack of confidence July may feel. She spells out every detail of the characters inner lives, but since they are not fully developed, the end result is not very satisfying. The characters "speechify" on and on, without impact. Two characters walking down a road that is a metaphor for life talk and talk until the emotional resonance of their journey has been talked away. Without constant self-reference, the characters could just walk and talk a la Before Sunset, which would have been more satisfying. There are quiet winning moments in the film, such as the encounter in the elevator of the art gallery, and more of those were necessary.

This movie is so self-conscious and precious, it clouds the emotional truth in the film. July works best in her stories regarding children; her adult stories pale in maturity. I never believed the relationship between the separated husband and wife and found the potshots at the art gallery to be juvenile. July's character is a wreck and a drama queen that was exhausting to watch. Quirky and imaginative does not mean behaving like a two-year-old.

I tried to imagine this as a literary novel, making up a realistic internal dialogue for the characters, but failed to be able to. The film is devoid of true characterization. This would have worked better as a 45 minute short film.

Much lighter and brighter than Todd Solondz chilling yet profoundly human film 'Happiness.' I felt they were similar in that they explored the strange things people do and say and the believable motivation behind them. Christine (reminiscent of Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a detached yet thoughtful artist who longs for romance and love. Richard is a lonely single father struggling to understand where his life is going after a recent separation.

The kids (who are each some of the best parts of this film) are caught up in an adult world figuring out who they are and where they fit in. This is an enjoyable dark comedy that had the crowd laughing at some parts and gasping at others. I left the theater satisfied and smiling.

You don't need to be expert at cinema to perceive the non-conventional quality of this movie. Shot, montage, soundtrack, script seem really "strange", surreal, at the limit of the nonsense. However, despite its alternative nature, it can tell us something interesting and comforting about human nature, and human deepest needs. Through paradoxical, irreverent and and totally disinhibited situations the director Miranda July gives voice to the weakest: the shy, the young, the lonely, those who desperately search for a human touch, for a single person capable of entering their inner, special, rare emotional world. That's why even the most vulgar, and almost disgusting language we hear, ceases to be disturbing, as we can hear behind that language another one, speaking words of love and searching for true affection.

In a way, the movie exorcises the power of modern means of communication, to reaffirm a very simple but universal truth: that still today people need to feel another person's presence, to see one another, to feel the touch of a hand, to sense the breath of one body, it's a need that no technological means will ever replace, and it's a great consolation!

Among all the characters of this choral movie, all united by a subtle but strong emotional line, I identified myself so much with Christine that I couldn't but sympathize with her, I followed her, funnily and desperately obsessed at running after a man, the man, who will probably be able to understand her simple world, bumping into funny and embarrassing situations, feeling uneasy with her blisters on her feet, when everything in her world sounds so easy and she can't make out why things don't turn out as they should, and I just said: it's me!

On the whole, the tone portraying some situations of life is sometimes too honest, unsophisticated and irreverent, however, we can get a delicate, comprehensive and joyous tone of a director who is still able to make herself be astonished by the colours of life. In the end, a very feel-good movie, original, never banal, never rhetorical and also moving.

Christine Jesperson (Miranda July) is a video artist desperate to get her work in Nancy Herrington (Tracy Wright)'s show. Richard Swersey (John Hawkes) is a recently separated shoe salesman with sons Peter and Robby. One day, Christine is driving her "Eldercab" to take Michael to buy shoes and Richard talks her into buying a pair herself. They begin a long hesitant romance. Meanwhile everybody they know is searching for connections in odd ways. Peter becomes entangled in Heather and Rebecca's sexual curiosity with Richard's boss Andrew. Robby gets into an internet sexual liaison with an unknown figure who turns out to be someone they know. Sylvie with her hope chest is infatuated with Peter.

The two girls are the most shocking. Robby is the scariest. Peter and Sylvie are the most touching. With all these kids dealing with these adult situations, the leads' romance actually seems tame by comparison. It's odd that the central characters don't measure up to their costars but that's the case here. It's quirky and offbeat but I wouldn't call it charming. The movie threatens to go dark with the kiddie material but it backs off before it goes overboard. Miranda July and John Hawkes are doing some interesting acting. They are endearing in their own sections.

This movie is about people trying to connect with each other, told in a very sweet, original way. It is quirky, beautiful, honest, and hilarious. The film follows the lives and dreams of many truly memorable characters, from the adorable and fascinating children to the adults with all their idiosyncrasies. I couldn't stop thinking about it the day after I saw it. I kept reliving the scenes in my head, and smiling.

I am so happy to have discovered Miranda July. Not only did she write, direct, and star in this film... she is also a performance artist, has released music CDs, and is planning on releasing a book of short stories next.

I'd recommend watching the trailer if you're curious. It definitely gives you a flavor of the film. If you like it, go see the movie, and you may fall in love, too.

After you see it, check out the movie website (http://www.meandyoumovie.com/) and Miranda's website (http://www.mirandajuly.com/) for more great stuff.

OK. First of all, i don't want to criticize the movie for the same old reasons others did. I found the whole idea of adults and children interacting and sometimes changing roles or mixing their desires, not at all pedophile. In fact those were few of the good ideas and it's strong bits. The weak parts of the movie are first of all the actors and mostly the dialogs. The problem i see is following. The movie tries somehow to show as everyday people, real people. Only,... no one talks or acts like that, i'm afraid. I mean this kind of talk might work well in a fully fictional film, for it could lead to a poetic approach, but this one was somehow a warmed up fiction with either too much or too less reality in it, your pick. I know that in the end it is just taste, and many will appreciate. But for me a typical pseudo-pretentious movie a la "garden state" who tries to mix up poetry and reality, and fails in the balance. Anyhow there were some real nice and creative ideas.

I was fortunate enough to see this at the IFC screening a couple of nights ago, and it was truly one of the most refreshing and genuinely enjoyable films I have seen in a long time. It reminded me of an artsier, less commercial Garden State with a female protagonist. And unlike Garden State (which is still a great film), it captured those random, lovely, hard-to-put-into-words bits of human emotion without having to try as hard.

Two very pleasant surprises were the young actors who played the shoe salesmen's sons, more specifically, the six-year-old. I won't spoil the movie for any of you who are planning on seeing it, but the scenes involving the kids on the computer is priceless - it's going to have me laughing for a few years, I think.

I was disappointed that Miranda July did not stay for the entire screening because I would have loved to congratulate her on such an amazing movie. I hope she gets the recognition she deserves!

Greetings again from the darkness. Performance artist Miranda July wrote, directed and stars in her first film and shows some very interesting flashes of what could lay ahead in her career. Her screen presence is solid, but the film gives the feeling that she tried to patch a story together with many individual ideas.

The desperation in so many lives can be uncomfortable to watch, but nothing compares to the EXTENSIVE sexual content regarding children. Some of it will draw nervous laughter and all of the kid actors are excellent. The flirtatious teenage girls played by Natasha Slayton and Najarra Townsend are at times fascinating. Miles Thompson and Carlie Westerman are right on as the misunderstood neighborhood kids, but Brandon Ratcliff is the real scene stealer.

Other than the lack of continuity in the story, the usually fine John Hawkes ("Deadwood") is really miscast and comes across as pretty much a loser as a husband, dad, shoe salesman and potential boyfriend. It is nice to see Ellen Geer (daughter of the great Will Geer), even if only in a couple of limited scenes.

Some really nice moments, but less than spectacular as a whole. Definitely not this years' "Sideways" as some have stated. The good news is that Miranda July's best work is probably ahead of her.