By Timeo

 Me and You and Everyone We Know came out last year around September or so, and I remember talking to another volunteer at TIFF who said she saw it at theatres and thought it was amazing. Roger Ebert apparently agreed with her, "One of the year's best films". What a bunch of lies.

It starts off well enough, another one of those quirky amusing indie films that Sundance cranks out every year (it's so typical), and for the first ten minutes or so, I see the promise and I'm willing to go with it. The story deals with isolation and trying to find somebody real in an increasingly isolating world. Right up my alley, right? Yeah, no.

The humor is certainly there, mostly because you don't often hear little children talking about wanting to poo and having that poo go into someone else's bum and them rocking back and forth as part of cyber sex. Forever. And it is certainly witty at times as illustrated by the chat between the two main characters Richard Swersey (played by John Hawkes) and Christine Jesperson (writer/director Miranda July) while they're walking down a street to their cars and using that as a metaphor for their lives and being in love and having to eventually turn to separate directions at Tyrone Street.

But there's something amiss in it all, and it's the distraction of trying to do too many things in too limited a time frame. The writer creates these characters and lives for the children that play a large role in the film, and maybe it's my optimism, but I find it awfully cynical and unnecessary to lament that children need to connect at even such a young age. I don't think as people, we really have problems until we're at least of maturity, and when you're 12 or 13, I don't think one can truly feel loneliness as loneliness sometimes can really be. I guess it's a way for Miranda July to establish that isolation starts at childhood, but I think she takes it too far and certainly doesn't really do it justice from the way I see it.

Philosophy apart, the acting is decent and the camera work is typical for a film like this: hand-helds occasionally; shots from interesting angles. Certainly nothing exceptional which would merit a Camera D'or from the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, but maybe it's just because I'm not a cinematographer. Who knows? I've seen better things in my life.

3 out of 5 stars