Transcendental Film: Me and You and Everyone you Know

By Erin Brodbeck
Collegian Editor
September 19, 2007

I first became aware of Miranda July when I was flipping through a spring issue of Vogue magazine. The 33-year-old performance artist/actress/director/writer/musician was looking wistful in a photo, wearing a green dress that matched her huge eyes and standing in a driveway surrounded by luggage. Her expression was lonely, sad and she was the coolest woman I had seen featured in the magazine for a while.

I watched July’s 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know (she wrote, directed and starred in it) for the first time over the summer. It was a hot August day, and I wandered into Blockbuster video in search of something different. I saw July’s first feature-length film sitting on the shelf and remembered her quirky-looking face from the Vogue feature I had read a few months ago.

I watched the DVD later that day, and at first didn’t really know what to make of it. I watched it again the next day, and found that the movie improved upon a second viewing. I came to love the oddball mini-adventures of Christine (July), a driver for ElderCab, a chauffeur service for senior citizens. After work hours, Christine is a performance artist hoping to score an exhibit in the local contemporary art museum.

The film interlaces the stories of other misfits: Two teenage girls naively flirt with a middle-aged man, a small child unknowingly participates in cyber sex and a shoe salesman goes through a divorce. July’s performance stands out, and I often found myself wishing she would stay onscreen longer, even if she was just filming her shoes, like in one scene, with the word “me” written on the left foot and “you” on the right.

Me and You won the Camera d’Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, which is given out to the best debut film at the event. I think the award was deserved. Me and You is a small, quiet film, but it is unique and sincere. One of the sweetest moments in the film is when Christine is driving around Michael (Hector Elias), her only ElderCab customer, and she notices a goldfish that has been absentmindedly left on the roof of someone’s car. Christine and Michael know the goldfish won’t be alive for long, and Christine pays tribute to the fish, saying, “I love you.”

The film is a series of simple moments and people passing the time together. No major events take place, but the little vignettes show that the tiny triumphs are what make life interesting.

brodbecke1@lasalle.edu