The Future looks promising indeed: it’s narrated by a cat named Paw-Paw, scored by Jon Brion (I ♥ Huckabees, Magnolia) and breaks the space-time continuum!
I couldn’t be more excited about this if I was ten years old and given a bag of puppies. Attracting pretty rave reviews since its Sundance premiere, The Future comes six years after Miranda July’s quietly, critically acclaimed debut Me and You and Everyone We Know.
The cinematography and Los Angeles setting make for a stunning, surreal trailer, promising all the eccentric graces of Me and You (offbeat dialogue, spazzy dance scenes) with some magical realism thrown in.
In one month Sophie and Jason will adopt a stray, terminally ill cat. Realising that this sets their future as responsible, grown-up people and signals the end of possibility; the couple embark on something of a mid-life crisis. “We’ll be 40 in 5 years” “40 is basically 50 and then…” “that’s it for us.” With the one month deadline the couple quit their jobs, disconnect the internet and try on the lives of other people.
I found a nice quote from an interview with July regarding the importance of extras, highlighting the performance of a woman apparently frozen in time: ” To me, that’s the greatest performance in the whole thing. You can only see her back, but I’m like, “She’s doing that so well! Does anyone realize how well she’s holding that pose?”
Just saying – if the performance of an extra’s back, alone, is that good – it should be a pretty amazing film.
Written and Directed by Miranda July, The Future stars Miranda July, Hamish Linklater and David Warshofsky.
Are you looking forward to The Future? Is mid-thirties too young for a mid-life crisis? Do you think that more films should be narrated by animals?
