GetOut Magazine

‘Me and You’ walks line between sweet and sexual
By CRAIG OUTHIER
GET OUT

Miranda July's Sundance-approved debut feature “Me and You and Everyone We Know” is sweet, sort of, and demented, sort of. Poised between innocence and fiendishness, it's precisely the sort of funny, offbeat refreshment that blockbuster-averse audiences crave during the parched summer months.

Set in a generic stretch of Anywhere, U.S.A., the movie returns us to that always-popular thematic refuge of independent filmmakers: The search for connection. Abandoned by his wife, department store shoe salesman Richard (John Hawkes from HBO's “Deadwood”) tries to connect with his two mixed-race sons, who treat him like a stranger. Boundlessly optimistic, Richard catches the eye of Christine, a struggling performance artist whose unusual role-playing art pieces betray a bright but terminally lonely soul. Writer/director July (herself a multimedia artist who bears a slight resemblance to “Six Feet Under” actress Rachel Griffiths) plays Christine, and does it with a freshness and honesty that keeps us from dismissing the character as damaged goods.

Christine's guileless flirtations at first rattle Richard, who already has his hands full at home. Richard's detached elder son, Peter (Miles Thompson from “First Watch”) takes the Pepsi Challenge with a pair of sexually curious neighborhood girls, while the younger boy, Robby (newcomer Brandon Ratcliff) wanders into an Internet relationship with an anonymous adult who construes his innocent poo-poo talk entirely the wrong way. “Me and You" is about sexual discovery, but also about retreat — entertaining fantasies and turning back, perhaps wiser, perhaps happier. Ratcliff is adorable, delivering one of the most confident, precocious performances you'll ever see from a 6-year-old.

With her themes of taboo sexuality and poetic isolation, July owes an obvious creative debt to avant-garde filmmaker Todd Solondz (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”), minus the stultifying hatred of all things human. “Me and You” suggests a more docile, flirtatious version of Solondz's “Happiness” mixed with a dash of “Napoleon Dynamite” (for the haircuts, if nothing else) and sprinkled with the emo-infused aural coolness of “Garden State.”

Moreover, the movie is lensed beautifully, finding flavor in the flavorless surroundings the way only a true piece of art can.