))<>((. Can you imagine what it means? It just looks like a typical emoticon that we often use on the Internet. It looks like little birds singing "caw-caw"; it also looks like two fishes heading in opposite directions. However, the youngest character in Me and You and Everyone We Know thinks that it means "back and forth." There are lots of such marks that are so modern and creative like this mark in the movie, making it seem a little bit strange and phantasmal. However, as time goes by, you will naturally get into it more.
Me and You and Everyone We Know is a wild-eyed observation of the way that people communicate in an impersonal society. Christine Jesperson, the main character in the movie, is a lonely artist and an "Eldercab" driver who has fantastic artistic points of view, which draw her into her own ideal world. Richard Swersey, another important character in the movie, is a newly-divorced shoe salesman and a father of two boys. He is always waiting for surprising things to happen. However, at the moment that he meets Christine, he panics. Both of them really like each other, but they are not accustomed to expressing their emotions. As time goes by, they keep showing their interest in each other, but neither can understand the other. Richard’s six-year-old son, Robby, is having an Internet romance with a stranger, and his fourteen-year-old brother, Peter, becomes an experiment for a six-year-old neighborhood girl who is preparing for her future marriage and housekeeping. All of the characters communicate in their own way, but fail to understand each other.
Miranda July, who plays the main character and produced the movie, is a performing artist, musician, writer, actress, and film director. She wants to explain the walls that exist between people and the courage that one needs to break through the walls. All the characters in the movie construct entanglements around themselves, struggling with solitude and communication gaps. Miranda July in some ways based the character of Christine on herself, while the other characters are loosely based on actual people around her. The movie portrays the real difficulties people have communicating in the digital era.
Right after watching the movie, I felt like I had just had a sweet dream. The movie was not spectacular and powerful at all, but I felt comfortable, and it made me smile calmly. It came to me like a vitamin in my routine life. On some languid Sunday afternoon, Me and You and Everyone We Know, may seem to whisper and smile to you, too: watch me, please.
