TORONTO – Performance artist Miranda July packs her sophomore film with a talking cat, an all-knowing moon, a dirty-talking senior and a shaggy-haired slacker with the ability to stop time.
Her reputation for quirk is on full display but there’s something much darker going on in “The Future,” where whimsy ultimately gives way to underlying shame, paralysis and sorrow.
July, who rose to indie darling status with her 2005 debut feature “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” acknowledges it’s a considerably darker film than followers of her fanciful work might expect.
“The movie’s really about time, particularly this sort of newly finite time that someone in their 30s experiences as opposed to how time exists when you’re in your 20s and it just seems like you could do anything or be anyone,” says the 37-year-old writer/director, whose myriad endeavours include short stories for The Paris Review, Harper’s and The New Yorker as well as videos, performances, and web-based projects for the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and two Whitney Biennials.
“And then you begin to realize in fact you’re not magically becoming maybe the person you planned on being. So suddenly every choice seems really important.”
“Ultimately it’s a pretty sad movie,” she concedes.
July stars as the anxiety-ridden Sophie, who lives in a cluttered L.A. apartment with her dishevelled boyfriend Jason. Consumed by self-doubt and urban ennui, both are shackled to jobs they hate and spend afternoons on the couch staring at laptops.
Their wasted lives sharpen into focus when they decide to adopt an injured stray cat and are told he will need ’round the clock care for the rest of his life. They have one month until he’s ready for adoption, and the deadline suddenly looms as their final day of freedom.
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“We’ll be 40 in five years,” says Sophie.
“Forty is basically 50,” Jason responds. “And then after 50, the rest is just loose change.”
They quit their jobs and embark on what they hope will be life-changing pursuits – Sophie vows to create a 30-day dance series, Jason says he will be simply guided by fate. The month slips away and desperation sets in.
July’s character Sophie is particularly cringe-inducing – she bemoans not being pretty enough, blatantly craves the gaze of strangers, is paralyzed by fear of failure when she attempts her 30-day project and embarks on an affair with a 50-ish single father.
“I think people wonder, ‘Oh you’re so productive why would you make a movie about someone like that?’ And it’s like, I think I’m so productive because I feel like that on the inside,” says July.
“I feel like I’m moving in slow motion, you know, and each thing I make feels like I’m starting from scratch and I’ve never made anything before and it’s all on this and the stakes are very high. That wasn’t a great leap.”
Putting those destructive tendencies on film “wasn’t fun,” she adds. “It wasn’t even cathartic.”
Surreal and fantastical elements highlight the couple’s emotional tumult.
The lonely feline, named Paw Paw, provides narration as he waits for the couple to pick him up. Meanwhile, Jason strikes up an unlikely connection with an elderly man whose home is cluttered with homemade greeting cards featuring lewd rhymes. Advice also comes to him from the moon, which he turns to in despair while magically freezing time in a bid to avoid heartbreak.
“In general I used the unreal elements for excruciating feelings, not so much to show magical whimsy in the world but more to really get at the heart of pain,” says July, noting that’s far more powerful than just showing “a guy being really bummed.”
July admits that pitching a tale with such whimsical elements was a challenge when she sought backing for the $1-million venture. But she says it also brought to the fore supporters who would champion her vision.
“The people who are kind of just along for the ride and really want to see what I’m doing next, they were like, ‘I don’t know, that could be terrible but if anyone’s going to pull it off, it would be you,'” says July, who is married to “Beginners” and “Thumbsucker” director Mike Mills.
“And here’s a very tiny little amount of money.”
July is used to divisive reaction to her work.
“Me and You and Everyone We Know” was a critical smash, winning a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Camera d’Or.
But for some, it also established her as a poster child for a twee, hipster pretension. Her work has sparked a legion of outspoken detractors, a movement July dismisses as “a passing thing.”
“That’s a small problem and I think one that people have fun with, you know – it’s fun to hate something and love something,” she says.
“It’s true I’m not going out of my way to make everything comfortable, for myself either. I love and hate myself, too.”
“The Future” opens in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal on Friday before heading to other cities.
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