Miranda July’s new film Kajillionaire, her first in nearly a decade, is another melancholy, silver lining-punctuated comic fable on the pains of being alive. But this effort finds July in her most accessible mode yet, telling a universal story about how we transcend the ways our parents screw us up that also finds the auteur at her most optimistic. Here we follow Old Dolio (a droll and committed Evan Rachel Wood), a young woman who lives with her small-time con artist parents (Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) that have been as clipped in their affections as they are with their scamming. Their life is led by hardline pragmatism and small-time grifting to get by – mail theft, giveaways, evading the landlord of their office space home that seeps pink foam from the walls. While their is little space for compassion in this family’s life, there is still plenty of room for Julyisms.
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