"Now that this has happened, what are my options?" Sophie asks her new thrill, Marshall, in "The Future." Sophie's long-term boyfriend, Jason, does not yet know about the affair.
"Well," Marshall says. "Traditionally people either tell the truth, or they lie."
Sophie's response: "I could never do either of those things."
That's a funny line — Neil Simon funny, ba-DUM-bum funny. Yet the writer-director of "The Future," Miranda July, is also the female lead, and there is not a performer on this earth less inclined to go for the ba-DUM-bum or the rat-a-tat-tat. Which makes Sophie's reply both funny and honest.
A uniquely vexing blend of foggy whimsy and observant soul-searching, "The Future" follows July's debut feature, "Me and You and Everyone We Know" (2005) in which July also appeared, though in a secondary role. Here, she co-stars with Hamish Linklater, who looks and talks a lot like July does: moppy dark hair, soft, squishy conversational rhythms. Besides Sophie, Jason (Linklater) and Marshall (David Warshofsky), the other major presence in "The Future" is a street cat, Paw-Paw, recently rescued and now scheduled for adoption, whose thoughts about life, mortality and yearning we hear in voice-over. July herself provides the cat voice.
Living in LA, preschool dance and movement instructor Sophie and tech-support home worker Jason see their commitment to Paw-Paw's adoption as a deadline. They have 30 days before the cat's in good enough shape to bring home. This means they have 30 days to go wild, in their own uncertain fashion. Now well into their 30s, Jason and Sophie hear the clock ticking. "Forty," says Jason, "is basically 50 and after 50 the rest is just loose change … not quite enough to get anything you really want."
Jason volunteers for a Greenpeace-type project raising money door to door to fight global warming. Sophie decides to post 30 YouTube dance performances in 30 days. Then, more or less by accident, she has an affair. Which changes everything, though she's not sure how, or in what ways. "The Future" nudges its characters in metaphysical directions, notably when Jason — who early on jokes that he has the ability to stop time — turns out to have the ability for real, as well as to converse with the moon, or the unseen man in it.
Some of July's notions feel cloying at worse, easy at best: When the parallels between Paw-Paw and Sophie are laid out, for example, we hear there's a "wild" nature in both creatures that cannot be denied. This sense of unruly behavior is mitigated, deliberately, by the gentleness and odd comic grace of July's presence and voice. The movie doesn't have much of a motor. But I like a lot of it, line to line, and I admire where we're left at the end. No clear answers, no facile resolution. Just an open question, relationally speaking.
"The Future"
Grade: 3 out of 4 stars
Genres: Drama
Running Time: 91 min
MPAA Rating: R
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