Miranda July often is described as “a precocious filmmaker.” That could easily be translated into self-promoting, untalented, posturing, pretentious and blessed with an oversupply of ego, as shown in “The Future,” which July wrote, directed and stars in as both a silly woman and the voice of an aged cat.
Between July and Hamish Linklater, there seems little evidence of life. They’re passive, unemotional, barely interested in anything except sitting on their couch and playing with their computers. Even when she enters into an affair with David Warshofsky, she seems oddly involved. Their sex is not arousing; in fact, it seems extremely boring to both of them, and to the viewer, as well.
They’re mostly like aging slackers who have no interest in anything that goes on around them. More curious, they aren’t very interested in each other — or themselves, for that matter.
July and Linklater, who has had a continuing role in the TV series, “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” share an apartment that appears to be decorated with pieces of their lives since adolescence, and they now are in their 30s. They make plans to adopt a convalescing, and dying, cat, and the cat gets the movie started with a scratchy voice over a black screen for several minutes. Just about the time you’re convinced there’s a problem with the projector, the light comes up on a cat in a cage, its foot carefully bandaged.
Looking for some defense for the young writer-director is difficult. An earlier effort, “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” has the same sort of innocent approach to a world that is not quite that innocent, but that was seven years ago, and by now she should have grown, or advanced, beyond the point where she will be labeled as a one-trick pony.
There are some lovely, gentle moments, and both July and Linklater are affable performers. Warshofsky appears slightly confused by a woman’s sudden arrival into his life, and July never is able to bring us back into the real world. Maybe that’s her point.
The Future opens today at the Tivoli
—Joe