Review of The Future (2011) by Kifah F — 27 Nov 2011

July, like her characters scanning the room for ceramic hippos, excels at noticing the peripheral details of life, while simultaneously missing the big picture.

It is a film I both want to hate and love more than I actually do. It's too brilliant and poignant to ignore or fully deride, too cloying and annoying to fully embrace.

July is a brilliant dancer, a stunning actress, and a shitty writer, all of which are on full display. While it's quite easy, for me at least, to characterize these talents, the matter of her film making itself is a slightly greater and more frustrating undertaking.

It's ironic that someone so adept at plumbing the depths of narcissism to reveal its modern day essence can so fatally allow her own to intrude on the film and almost fatally disrupt its vision and diminish its insight. Why does July voice Paw-Paw herself? Whose agency is the narration supposed to articulate, July, her character, or the Cat's? Is a simple confession of infidelity too bourgeoisie for July to deal with? Can she not imagine her characters or herself in that situation? Could there be no opening for quirk to enter in the scenario under this choice? Ideally, questions of ambiguity such as these should be enriching to the material, but in The Future, the layers of self obsession are so dense that they practically implode the film.