"Me and You and Everyone We Know" is an exercise in subdued radicality: writer/director Miranda July delivers some incredible scenes involving sex between minors, self-inflicted violence, an unsupervised 7-year-old assuaging the sexual frustrations of an adult woman online. But the whole thing is delicately and sincerely executed so that taking offense doesn't come into it.
"When I was writing the screenplay," says July, "I managed to stay in the nonjudgmental process, which I think is important when dealing with this kind of material. I looked at the world around me and I wanted to write about it in an honest way. . . . I felt I was doing this with a lot of love and that in the end, people would take it the right way." And they did: "Me and You" originated during her time at Sundance's Screenwriting Laboratory (created for the benefit of newcomer filmmakers looking to hone their craft) and now many are calling her the next Sophia Coppola.
Indeed, the 32-year-old July has the appearance of someone who just walked off the set of "Virgin Suicides," a seeming incarnation of all that is agonized and fragile in a young woman.