I give this movie credit for being unlike anything I have seen before, and there is something to be said in favor of a movie that could hold my attention for ninety minutes whose main characters are a shoe salesman and a performance artist. Richard, the shoe salesman, has just separated from his wife and Christine, the performance artist, is looking to make a connection with just about anybody she can identify with. Given Christine's unusual outlook this is not easy, but she is taken with Richard and forces the relationship. In addition to Richard and Christine we are treated to several minor characters, including Richard's two sons, an art curator, a pre-pubescent concentrating on her hope chest, two sexually curious teenage girls, and a middle-aged man with a predilection for posting sexually-explicit messages on his front windows.
Christine is trying to get a piece of performance art (in this case a home video) accepted for display at a local art museum. The curator asks the question, which is seemingly her main criterion, "Could this have been made in any era, or only now?" I think that this must have been the question the director, writer, and star of this movie, Miranda July, was trying to give a positive answer to with this movie. And I think that she succeeds, given the roles that sex chat rooms, e-mail, casual oral sex, home video and audio, crude bathroom humor, and electronic music play in the film. And I doubt that a person like July could have gotten such a small film to market until recent times.
There are some touching scenes, particularly ones involving Christine and some of her interactions with people she encounters in her day job as a chauffeur for older people. While driving a man in his 70s around one day, he mentions that his friend in the assisted living home broke up with him. Christine asks why, and he says, "She thinks she is going to die this week." This is typical of a lot of the humor in this movie, it is funny, but also sad; I found Christine's relationship with Richard to be that. Overall, however, a light touch is maintained.
The main problem I had was that I could not get emotionally involved with any of the people. Richard's sons Peter and Robby should have been able to win your heart, but Peter simply plays the sullen teenager and Robby is fixated on human excrement. The film's structure, such as it is, is episodic and it never coalesces into anything greater than the sum of its parts.
Christine is trying to get a piece of performance art (in this case a home video) accepted for display at a local art museum. The curator asks the question, which is seemingly her main criterion, "Could this have been made in any era, or only now?" I think that this must have been the question the director, writer, and star of this movie, Miranda July, was trying to give a positive answer to with this movie. And I think that she succeeds, given the roles that sex chat rooms, e-mail, casual oral sex, home video and audio, crude bathroom humor, and electronic music play in the film. And I doubt that a person like July could have gotten such a small film to market until recent times.
There are some touching scenes, particularly ones involving Christine and some of her interactions with people she encounters in her day job as a chauffeur for older people. While driving a man in his 70s around one day, he mentions that his friend in the assisted living home broke up with him. Christine asks why, and he says, "She thinks she is going to die this week." This is typical of a lot of the humor in this movie, it is funny, but also sad; I found Christine's relationship with Richard to be that. Overall, however, a light touch is maintained.
The main problem I had was that I could not get emotionally involved with any of the people. Richard's sons Peter and Robby should have been able to win your heart, but Peter simply plays the sullen teenager and Robby is fixated on human excrement. The film's structure, such as it is, is episodic and it never coalesces into anything greater than the sum of its parts.