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| Miranda July and Hamish Linklater in The Future |
The Future is narrated by a scared cat that is recovering from a foot amputation and waiting for a mousey couple to adopt it. But the voice of the cat belongs to Miranda July, the writer, director and star of this elusive movie. In 2005, July directed an equally odd but considerably more poignant film called Me and You and Everyone We Know; but she is primarily a performance artist. The principles of that theatrical art form are vaguely defined and understood, and as her film flits in and out of the fantasy realm, July doesn’t cue us how she feels about the characters.
Those characters are Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater), a pair of passive-aggressive Los Angeles bohemians whose similar looks and lack of direction may or may not be July’s idea of social satire. When they work up the courage to adopt the ailing cat, the couple are forced to wait a month while it heals. During that month, Sophie and Jason drift apart as awkwardly as they must have drifted together.
Jason decides he’ll be attuned to cosmic vibrations, so he quits his job in tech support and becomes the world’s worst door-to-door salesman. Sophie stops doing her dance-a-day YouTube series after one try, and impulsively calls a sleazy single dad (David Warshofsky) for the spontaneous sexual connection her life is lacking.
A shared longing for connection and purpose roots the movie in recognizable emotions, but the fleeting whimsy generates some oppressively hot air.
Why does a yellow T-shirt follow Sophie to the man’s house and engage her in a suffocating pantomime? Why is the man’s daughter digging a grave in their backyard? Why does the talking moon have so little to say?
July is a provocative and honorably independent filmmaker, but given the meager rewards of investing our time, The Future wasn’t worth the wait.
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