esrosedotblog

Today's film has a double whammy that sneaks up on you.

And when it bites it hurts. So hard that I had to bail out. Violence really. I feel betrayed. And I still hurt. I bite too.

I will at least tell you there are spoilers here and not surprise you with any kind of ambush as Miranda July does to us in this her second film.

The Future (2011)

A young couple, together four years have an almost whimsical lifestyle. Slackers. Not deeply attached to anything. Least, it would seem, to each other or even themselves.

This is amusing for awhile and only a little hard to believe as neither has much of a visible means of support but they get by on irony and heavy detachment from their feelings.

Right there, I should have known.

They decide to get a cat. Not even to "heal" anything but to take on a responsibility for awhile. They choose an injured stray cat they had found in in the street. The cat has a prognosis. He has hemophilia and will need shots. They had assumed he would only live 6 months, that is why they could take him on. No big commitment.

Now, the trouble. The cat talks to us in a baby voice. We identify with the cat's unhappiness with his life so far and his hope that these people will help him. A "forever" home.

I suppose this happens or some version of it with a lot of people who take rescue animals. Their expectations are out of line with reality. In any case, there is a problem. The cat needs to recuperate and it will take a month. He will have to stay in the shelter until they come back.

I allowed myself to get caught up with the cat's charm (I think Ms July in kitty voice).

The deal is that waiting for a change in their life takes and saps all the couple's energy and it is here that the film turns dark.

Each of the couple people are affected in different ways. None are attractive or nice and rather than drawing them together the wait, the kitty, the experience of delayed gratification is so heavy on them that everything goes to hell. Whimsy and irony fail them, eccentricity becomes mental disorder, lack of commitment leads to weird tangents that destroy even the marginal jobs and lives that they had together.

I saw this coming early enough to feel that I was going to be betrayed. And I was.

I was sucked in by the cat voice and I knew it. I grew anxious that the arc of this film was going in a painful direction and I didn't like it.

I was promised a rose garden and I bought into it and now I was getting the thorns.

Of course, this is just what happens to these people and I became part of the same process.

Ahhhhh. Whimsy. Like a silent movie. How sweet. Nice, innocent and naive.

I should have seen lost, childish and willful, a slave to their impulses with little if any impulse control.

Low reactors are, of course, the most passive aggressive people and, as Ms. Miranda shows in this film, the most capable of mean acts.

My worst fears were realized when I bailed. I jumped ahead in time to see that they missed the pickup date for the cat by one day and it is euthanized. Cruel and mean and not necessary to make a point about what was an obvious situation. A lot of shit happens but this was not acceptable as a device. Cuteness becomes a kind of nasty retribution for believing in the film or the people in it. Pessimistic. Even nihilistic. And forget the part where the cat comes back to narrate about what life after death is like. Holy fucking catnip.

I had to write this to get the bitter taste out of me and please, I am sorry but I warned you at the head of this.

I am not even going to show a trailer for this nasty prank. Ms. July can take her quirky gamin delightfulness and shove it back up her ass where it came from.

Labels: films