Review of The Future (2011) by Lorenzo V — 21 Dec 2011

"They petted me and I accidentally made that sound that said, 'I am a cat and I belong to you,' and upon making the sound I felt it to be true.".

When a couple decides to adopt a stray cat their perspective on life changes radically, literally altering the course of time and space and testing their faith in each other and themselves.

REVIEW.

A 35 year old couple, Sophie and Jason (Miranda July and Hamish Linklater), goes through odd challenges trying to reach a peace in their self-examined life. That they are too similar in their deadpan defeatism is offset by their quirky eccentricity, giving lightness to the otherwise dark, sometimes dryly comedic deconstruction of the dull life. My summary takes no account of the lame, narrating cat they plan to adopt, Jason stopping time, and the shifting space as their life together progresses slowly from quiet contemplation to banal challenge. PawPaw the cat gives a philosophical overview about waiting for life to happen as it awaits the couple's adoption, just as the couple awaits the future with an old-fashioned hippy-like concentration on the small parts of life and a dangerous naiveté. Other magical occurrences place this lyrical but snail-paced film in the formalist mode including Jason's talking to the moon and Miranda's envisioning friends' children growing up before her eyes. July makes it work; so childlike and fantastic at times is the couple that the audience joins in the fantasy hoping to see more clearly the arc of life in order to arrange it more felicitously.