Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know returns to IFC Center in honor of theater’s twentieth anniversary
ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (Miranda July, 2005)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Tuesday, June 17, 12:40 & 6:50, $12.70
www.ifccenter.com
www.mirandajuly.com
Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Sundance “for originality of vision,” performance artist Miranda July’s feature-film directorial debut is a success from start to finish, an original, engaging, and utterly charming romantic comedy that is as unique as it is familiar. July, who also wrote the screenplay, stars as an idiosyncratic young performance artist who is looking for a relationship in her rather mundane life. She immediately falls for a shoe salesman (John Hawkes) who is separating from his wife and trying to understand his kids (Brandon Ratcliff and Miles Thompson), who are having a strange online dalliance with a mystery e-mailer. Meanwhile, two high school girls (Najarra Townsend and Natasha Slayton) are sexually tormenting a bizarre loner (Brad Henke) who is sexually tormenting them right back, both humorously and dangerously.
It’s nearly impossible to take your eyes off of July, whose innovative audio and visual installations and short films have been shown at the Andy Warhol Museum, the Whitney Biennial, the Kitchen, Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art, Union Square Park, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival, among many other prestigious places. The Vermont native has gone on to make such other features as The Future and Kajillionaire and written such books as No One Belongs Here More Than You, The First Bad Man, and All Fours while also developing a deeply personal and boldly honest online presence.
Me and You and Everyone We Know is screening June 17 at 12:40 & 6:50 as part of IFC Center’s twentieth anniversary celebration of its opening at the old Waverly, with tickets at the 2005 price of $10.75 (plus $1.95 service fee), along with 2005 prices for drinks and popcorn. The one-day party of the theater’s original lineup also includes a 4K restoration of William Lustig’s 1980 slasher sensation Maniac, starring Joe Spinell, with Lustig in conversation with Aimee Kuge after the 7:15 screening; Yasujiro Ozu’s 1932 silent I Was Born, But . . .; and D. A. Pennebaker’s genre-redefining 1967 Bob Dylan documentary, Don’t Look Back. All screenings will be preceded by Joe Stankus’s 2014 five-minute black-and-white Marquee, in which Larry Alaimo talks about the changes in the neighborhood as he updates the IFC Center marquee.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]