Sunday: What I Did Today

[commonpeople1]

Miranda July, The Future, 2011
I visited the Hackney Picture House with a couple of friends today for the first time , to see Miranda July's new film. Hackney Picture House is a lot like the Rich Mix near Brick Lane, but better laid out: it also has a stage for live music and literature nights, areas for art exhibitions, food and drinks for sale and plenty of sitting space. We were happily impressed by it.

This is the first time I see a Miranda July film (I've only known about her short stories.) I didn't know what to expect which helped me get into the movie (helped by the Picture House's extremely comfortable, reclining seats.) I'm not a big fan of American Quirk/Twee (i.e. Napoleon Dynamite), but The Future worked for me. It's not a film trying to be cool or win an indie audience; it's very centred on Miranda's background in literature, dance and art (some could think of some aspects of it as a little pretentious) but it had enough humour and darkness, I thought, to counterbalance it. Miranda, who wrote and directed it, plays one half of a couple living in L.A. who are on the brink of entering their mid-30s life crisis. There's a print of Escher's on the couple's wall which keeps reappearing in the movie, and it was a smart symbol of the story's structure and the characters' problems: they are stuck in these patterns they can't get out of, trying to make sense of their lives (find meaning and direction), but they keep returning to the same spots.  To which one of my friends added that, also like the Escher's print, their lives are sort of wonderful.

Every time I think American cinema is dead and there's nothing remotely interesting coming out of there, a film comes along to shut me up.