Me and You and Everyone We Know--Chris Tharp

A theme I noticed Miranda July express throughout the relationships in her film is that in this postmodern digital age in which people communicate with one another through indirect barriers, we have our own sets of expectations, and we will each suffer rejection and an inability to connect with one another, but we will ultimately be able to reach someone and bring them or be brought happiness or experience or some sort of truth. Miranda July’s character, Christine, in an act of frustrated desperation, gushes her true feelings about how she feels she was treated only when she is sure that Nancy, the art curator, has already turned off the tape and stopped watching the video that she wouldn’t accept in person. Christine even mentions that the screening and critiquing process would have been incredibly awkward in person. Andrew, Richard’s coworker, communicates the grossest, most crass things to the two high school girls, Heather and Rebecca, only when he can do it through the safety of his living room window. In person, he confesses that he would talk dirty to them, but it wouldn’t be legal, and when they knock on his door, he hides. Robby confesses a weird, almost Freudian sexual desire to Nancy on a cyber sex chat room. They tell one another that they trust each other, and because Robby is so honest and unashamed in a way that isn’t threatening, it is believable that there could be trust in this anonymous relationship. When Nancy and Robby meet on the park bench and Nancy kisses little Robby, it seems appreciative and innocent. Robby’s older brother Peter has oral sex with Heather and Rebecca only after he puts the towel over his face so he can’t watch them. Life is about finding those fleeting moments of love and happiness and experiencing them knowing that things can’t go on like that forever, like the metaphor Miranda July uses in the beginning of her film about the goldfish staying alive only if the car travels at that constant speed forever. Christine’s “You” and “Me” shoes take turns going after one another, but either the timing isn’t right, or they are playing hard to get, and things aren’t as simple as just being together. The film ends on an optimistic note though when Christine and Richard are finally get the timing right.
Me and You and Everyone We Know infuses poetry with everyday life. The characters don’t behave out of the ordinary, their relationships are just abstracted because what they communicate with one another is so truthfully surreal. This surreal postmodern world is very effectively captured throughout the cinematography with the archetypal bright pink of Christine’s stickers and shoes and a number of other possessions. There is one scene in which the editing makes it appear as though Heather and Rebecca will get hit by Christine’s car as they run giddily down the street. Our expectations are set up for this, but ultimately nothing happens to either because they were on two different streets. This functions as a criticism of our propensity to only see the unpleasant and horrifying forces at work when the world is an indifferent place. I interpreted the scenes that contained birds in the film to mean that we are no less simple and free than birds are, we just complicate things for ourselves in this modern world by constructing barriers and shutting one another out.