The Future(2011)
Directed By Miranda July ![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkYgvb8Vj9SFLFvLf5Y5o1QOz5tTZWt1PCQiNGQ5CEkeUrddsVyIIKqVWUop4Dqmo2K9sFfPzZrhGwO9kVkhfjqO6uhI2W0K_1VmP6oSAJtuUyO6XTUjGfLaWcVV2RFS7d6KIsDrGcnvrT/s400/8.jpg)
isn't sure what his dreams are, he wants to
"help the world" but doesn't know how or where to begin. He takes a job with a "non-profit" going door to door trying to get people to buy trees to be planted throughout the city.
July tries to do a video-project for YouTube called
"30 days, 30 dances", inspired by videos of younger girls dancing in their bedrooms imitating girls from rap videos.
Her dances are not as overtly sexual, but slinky, jerky performance art that never seems to get itself started.
He puts his hand on her leg, she humps his furniture.
Meanwhile when
discovers the affair, before he can ask any questions, he manifests an ability to freeze time by placing his hands on July's head.
Here the narrative splits in two parallel stories, one of July's new life in the suburbs, and the other of
's in the apartment where time stands still.
This all sounds complicated, but when all is said and done, the plot makes sense on an emotional level that never gets buried under the allure of its fantasy elements.
"The Future" finds Miranda July stepping into interstitial territory previously synonymous with
Woody Allen and
Charlie Kaufman; combing personal details (
"30 Dances, 30 Days" is a more amateurish version of July's
Blond Redhead music video), with a satirical eye for conventional relationships equally open to turns of the dramatic, the neurotic, the deadpan, and the poetic.
Quitting your job in the worst recession in decades because your a month away from getting a sick kitten that has made you suddenly aware of your impending adulthood/responsibility/death is just as possible as freezing time with your thoughts, talking to the moon, or stepping out of your life and into your fantasy kept suburban wifedom, because in
"The Future" all things are possible.
Cats are dreaming of life in your house, but the future is less fresh tuna and flying cars as much recordings of bedroom rump-shaking and trees pining over places to be planted. Maybe its the looming of the future itself, its shadow across the surface of what responsible lives are supposed to resemble that drives these characters from their simple "twee" world of uni-sex haircuts, security blankets and sleepy, snuggly, afternoons, and into ruin, bitterness, and isolation.
"When your just starting out...you'll do terrible things to each other"-the old man. But ignoring the future, is no better than blindly saying
"yes" to all it, because all decisions have consequences and time can't stand still forever.
What begins with all the makings of a typical rom-com story of slackers finding purpose, sidewinds into magic realist study of fears of parenthood/adulthood like
"Eraserhead" if he had to work at a build-a-bear in the mall.
For all its strangeness,
"The Future" has the most realistic endings of any film Ive seen this year. Bitter-sweet is beauty without sentiment, true acceptance of how cosmically wonderous all the minutia of daily life is while never forgetting most of it will be forgotten tomorrow.
"The Future" is bittersweet.
Your kittens is wounded and waiting.
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