Me and You and Everyone We Know

Rarely have I come across films have electronic music as the backbone for their acoustical component. So when I watched Miranda July 's Me and You and Everyone We Know, it was for me some kind of pleasant surprise. You may remind me some other films feature quite a lot of cool music, but I think there are not much equivalent to the tranquility effect the music created here. Too often people employed electronic music in their films the ones they chose are quite up-beat or I will just simly put it as the "cool" category. Though I should admit perhaps this kind of romantic comedy seldom triggers my viewing impulse and that makes me fuss here.

Me and You... can not be appreciated if you are looking for some big stories or abstract allusion or fancy jump cut or whatever characteristics would increase a certain kind of people's adrenal secretion. It has no grandiose thesis or ambition, but the aspiration to explore the ambiguous distance between me and you and everyone we know, if to say, everybody is an island.

Its moments of cuteness might remind the audience films like Amelie, but Amelie's extraordinary imagination is replaced by a sense of reality, which creates an intimate distance to the audience. Btw, I could not care less Yann Tiersen's music.

The first set seized me is when July was driving her cab with her customer, they found that a goldfish ( in a water bag) had been forgotten leaving on the top of its owner's van and they tried to save the goldfish's life. Theoretically speaking, the only way to save the fish is keeping the vehicle a steady speed. But it come out they could not make it despite the effort. Why this scene caught me, with such a seemingly hypersensitive cutesy tone? Because I know July! The woman show a terrible lost look when their effort was in vain. Not much girls act in such an eccentric way, which you could examine again and again throughout the movie, and they are my friends.

To apply Michael Andrews's music is quite a smart move. The first artist got in my mind is Michel Redolfi, who is addicted to making "underwater music". And at the very beginning, the actor burnt his hand intensionally (and mistakenly), the world was mute and the music got start, which appears to me just as something happens underwater or, otherworldly. Andrew's music has an ambiguous atmosphere, which in line with that of BOC or my recently listening Freescha, is something you could call isolating and bleak and attracting and warm all in the same time. They are in one, so are the interpersonal relationships the film tries to present.