The Future Is Here: well actually it's already been and gone, but read this anyway?

The Future (released 2011)

Written & Directed by Miranda July

Cast: Miranda July, Hamish Linklater, David Warshofsky

The Future: the title of Miranda July’s second and newest film couldn’t be more appropriately titled. The Future, two words for which some of us (the thirty-somethings raised in the relative idle comfort of the middle class, who aimlessly pursued a fruitless liberal arts degree and are still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up) causes an immediate reaction of sweaty palms and panic, not unlike being stuck in an elevator.  

The film can be described in one word: anxiety.  Miranda July’s given a voice to the voiceless, err I mean those of us who are too incapacitated by moving from the realm of the should-do into the realm of the will-do. She has expressed in a film of fluidly awkward storytelling, beautiful cinematography and seamlessly woven-in performance art what the rest of us want to say, but can’t.

This film is getting buzz, I would even go out on a limb and say more than her previous film Me You and Everyone You Know (2005), so you probably already know the plot. That, and the film has already been and gone to the Broadway Theatre.  My excuse for the tardiness of this review, you might have already guessed it. After not writing any reviews for well over a year, I was overcome by anxiety. So you are getting this now, too late, after the fact. I chose to do nothing, but time didn’t stop. Which might just be the point of the film?

For those of you not in the know, the plot centres around a couple, Jason (Hamish Linklater) and Sophie (Miranda July). At almost 35 they decide to embark on the road of commitment, and by commitment they mean adopting an elderly cat with various health issues and a severely limited life span. Only they find out Paw Paw (the cat) may live longer than they expected, sending them into an existential crisis (because you know at 35 in 5 years your 40, and after that your basically 50, and then after that its just loose change). Sophie and Jason have one month before Paw Paw is their fur-ball forever (I mean 2-5 years prior to Paw’s Paw’s unavoidable death) and they decide this is the time to really live. That’s where I’ll stop and that’s where the film begins.

The beauty of this film is the simplicity, yet complexity of the story; the emotional earnestness of Paw Paw’s narration (voiced by Miranda July), a talking moon and an ill fated love affair with a suburban dad who wears a gold chain and of course the super awkweird moments that only Miranda July can animate so well.

I say watch it (either in another city or wait until its released into the interweb, or on DVD), my guess is that you’ll see yourself reflected on the screen or you may just be annoyed by the irritating frivolous crises of skinny white confused thirty-somethings who spend too much time comparing themselves to others. But I loved the film, just saying.