The Future

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.
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Review: The FutureToronto Film Scene|Katarina Gligorijevic

Let’s get this out of the way first: yes, Miranda July‘s latest film, The Future, is narrated by a cat. And no, that’s not a cheap gimmick, or something that makes the film silly or not-worth-your-time. In fact, the pathos of the cat-as-cat as well as the cat-as-metaphor is quite charming, serves the story well, and is for the most part, unobtrusive. July does not overuse the cat. The cat is just right.

If you’re among those who find Miranda July a bit on the precious side, the cat might seem like it’s a bit much? Move along, perhaps to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which also opens today? If you’re already a fan of July’s work, or unfamiliar with it but willing to take a chance, The Future is very likely to satisfy.
As in July’s first feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know, the artist casts herself in the lead role, this time as Sophie, a woman in her mid 30s who teaches dance to little kids. She lives with her boyfriend Jason (Hamish Linklater), who does telephone tech support from home. Their lives are comfortable, full of familiar patterns and habits, but definitely directionless.

In a month, Sophie and Jason are due to adopt a stray cat, Paw Paw, who’s currently convalescing at a shelter (with a broken paw). The couple were originally led to believe that the cat only had a few months to live, but when they discover that with a bit of love, they could look forward to many happy years of cat-parenthood, Paw Paw suddenly starts to seem like a grim reminder of their encroaching and utterly delayed adulthood (or should we call it middle age).

Sophie and Jason decide that, since their responsible future is fast approaching, they must live this final month of freedom to its absolute fullest. Both quit their unfulfilling jobs and embark on new, uncharted paths. Jason initiates a strange friendship with an old man he meets through the Penny Saver newspaper, while Sophie plunges head first into an affair with an older man whose phone number she finds on the back of a drawing. Both halves of the insecure and immature couple seek something deeper in these odd encounters that they hide from each other – meaning, answers, a chance to escape their current lives. Meanwhile Paw Paw patiently waits to take up residence in their loving home, which now threatens to disintegrate before the month elapses.

The Future isn’t exactly a traditional narrative, but it is full of such raw honesty that the moments of excruciating familiarity or awkwardness it elicits from its audience are almost heartbreakingly real, and also extremely funny. July’s work was recently described in The Atlantic as “disarmingly lovely with an undercurrent of faint dread creeping through”, which is an incredibly apt way of expressing the enjoyably unsettling feeling of watching her films.

Ultimately, The Future is not about a directionless couple having an early-ish midlife crisis narrated by a cat. It’s a film about people allowing themselves to stop waiting for permission to begin living their lives, to stand unafraid in the face of enormous obstacles and their own mistakes, knowing that only in this state of freedom can they truly find self-acceptance, love, and a future. July has her detractors who will surely find the film silly (and might think I’m reading too much into the talking cat), but it’s a beautifully crafted dissection of love, and life.