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Me and You and Everyone We Know is quirky, mundane and not to be missed By Chris Honoré,Tidings reviewer Sep 01, 2005 12:00 AM A A & Me and You and Everyone We Know,& winner of the Special Prize for Originality of Vision at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, is a small, quirky film that is interesting and at moments downright unsettling. Certainly, it isn& t a movie that has any pretensions of ever being commercial. Yet there are aspects of the film that are intriguing and even delightful and clearly has found an audience. It also poses an interesting question regarding film: How closely does a film want to mirror our daily existence? Movies trade in fantasy. In tweaking life and giving it a polish on the assumption that while moviegoers want a dose of verisimilitude, it& s also true that daily life can be far too mundane and even trivial to carry two hours on the big screen. And yet Miranda July, who directs and stars in & Me and You,& relishes the trivial, the mundane, letting the story embrace all those odd details and omnipresent tics that define living. Hence the film follows a narrative arc that is almost pedestrian, focusing on Richard (John Hawkes), a thirty-something shoe salesman. In the opening scenes we see him struggling with the fact that his wife, who has found someone else, is packing up to leave. In protest, he stands outside the window of his two young boys and sets his hand on fire. It isn& t that he& s crazy, just at a loss to express what he is feeling. It& s more a dramatic gesture to counteract his overwhelming sense of loss. Which is thematic to the film. Characters make gestures that are symbolic of those great silences that can exist between people, often seeming impenetrable. The film is set in a nondescript L.A. neighborhood where Richard lives with his two sons. The hood is also composed of a collage of people. At times, during the movie, it can seem like July has set up a static camera and filmed people as they come into view and linger. — — IF YOU GO — — & Me and You and Everyone We Know& Starring Miranda July, John Hawkes, Brad Henke and Brandon RatcliffeDirected by Miranda JulyRated R Of course, she hasn& t but the film has that feel about it. As well, July doesn& t retreat from issues that can be unsettling, adolescent sexuality being one of them. We get a glimpse into the often stark world that kids live in & aided by the Internet and explicit chat rooms & as they struggle to claim their new, emerging identities. Threading its way through & Me and You& is a love story that is so tentative as to be the equivalent of starting to say something then covering your mouth before a complete thought can get out. A young woman, Christine (Miranda July), happens to come into Richard& s shoe store and is smitten. Yet their efforts at reaching out to one another are frustratingly inept and clumsy and, yet, ever so charming in a completely off-center way. But then there& s nothing on-center about this film. Is & Me and You& a must-see? If you search out films that are provocative and disturbing, in a benign, interesting way, movies that take pleasure in all those small, recognizable vagaries that are so self-evident in living, then by all means don& t miss this movie. July takes huge risks with this, her debut feature film, and the sum total is an interesting story that begs to be discussed afterward, even if the first sentence is, & Boy, was that strange.& Now Playing 40 Year Old Virgin 40-year-old Andy has a nice job, a lovely apartment, a proud collection of action figures and comic books, good friends and a nice attitude. But he's never "done the deed." Then he meets Trish, a 40-year-old mother of three. Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd. 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