Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)

Quotes about Me and You and Everyone We Know: [[Roger Ebert; https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/me-and-you-and-everyone-we-know-2005 Review of "Me and You and Everyone We Know" (23 June 2005); https://www.webcitation.org/6HF6mWMQZ?url=http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/the-best-films-of-the-decade "The Best Films of the Decade" (30 December 2009)] * ], ; later ranked 5 in his

Quotes about Me and You and Everyone We Know: [[Miranda July] ]'s Me and You and Everyone We Know is a film that with quiet confidence creates a fragile magic. It's a comedy about falling in love when, for you, love requires someone who speaks your rare emotional language. Yours is a language of whimsy and daring, of playful mind games and bold challenges. Hardly anybody speaks that language, the movie suggests — only me, and you, and everyone we know, because otherwise we wouldn't bother knowing them. As a description of a movie, I suppose that sounds maddening. An example: A young woman walks into a department store, and in the shoe department, she sees a young man who fascinates her. His hand is bandaged. She approaches him and essentially offers the gift of herself. He is not interested; he's going through a divorce and is afraid of losing his children. She asks him how he hurt his hand. "I was trying to save my life," he says. … Now imagine these two characters, named Christine (Miranda July) and Richard (John Hawkes) as they walk down the street. She suggests that the block they are walking down is their lives. And so now they are halfway down the street and halfway through their lives, and before long they will be at the end. It is impossible to suggest how poetic this scene is; when it's over, you think, that was a perfect scene, and no other scene can ever be like it. … Miranda July is a performance artist; this is her first feature film (it won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, and at Cannes won the Camera d'Or as best first film, and the Critics Week grand prize). Performance art sometimes deals with the peculiarities of how we express ourselves, with how odd and wonderful it is to be alive. So does this film. As Richard slowly emerges from sadness and understands that Christine values him, and he must value her, for reasons only the two of them will ever understand, the movie holds its breath, waiting to see if their delicate connection will hold. Me and You and Everyone We Know is a balancing act, as July ventures into areas that are risky and transgressive, but uses a freshness that disarms them, a directness that accepts human nature and likes to watch it at work.