THE FUTURE
Playing at Vancity Theatre Oct. 28 to 30, Nov. 4 to 6
That a talking cat narrates Miranda July's latest film The Future shouldn't come as a surprise to fans of the eclectic performance artist, actress, writer and director. Nor should it surprise them that the sensitive and acutely perceptive feline, known as Paw-Paw, isn't even the strangest element of the film.
Through her critically acclaimed debut Me You And Everyone You Know, short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You and "participatory" website, art project and companion book Learning to Love You More, July has gained a reputation for being a queen of quirk and princess of precious. But despite the wall-to-wall idiosyncrasies and whimsy, July's work has never shied away from examining the bigger questions about life, love, mortality and our precarious foothold in the universe.
In The Future, an aptly titled film considering it was originally slated for release in Vancouver way back in August only to be delayed and rescheduled repeatedly, July plays Sophie, a children's dance instructor living in Los Angeles with her work-at-home boyfriend, Jason, played by July doppelganger Hamish Linklater. Faced with the upcoming adoption of a rescued cat, the couple gives themselves 30 days to explore as many avenues of their complacent lives as they can before the impending responsibilities of cat ownership and their finite existence comes into focus. By then we'll be 35, which is practically 40, which is practically 50 and then the rest is just loose change, reasons Linklater.
So they quit their jobs, disconnect from the Internet at home and head out into the big wide world, even more doe-eyed than before. Linklater joins an environmental cause selling trees door to door and meets an oddly familiar elderly man who dispenses sage advice and dirty limericks, while July attempts to post daily dance clips of herself on YouTube before embarking on a secret affair with an older man.
From there, things get increasingly surreal-a man in the moon, a yellow T-shirt with a mind of its own, the stoppage of time and a young girl who digs a hole in the ground to sleep in. But at its core, The Future remains a deeply moving film, full of awkwardness, poetry, humour and a sense of sadness and longing that comes from going forward and leaving the past behind.
mkissinger@vancourier.com
