DVD Reviews

Me You and Everyone We Know

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This kooky and attention-grabbing American indie art house film is perhaps not as star studded as I Heart Huckabees, or as quietly absorbing as The Station Master and it has none of Lost in Translation's mystique. However, it is a pretty, episodic piece in which various lives pass, bypass and connect. Richard is a shoe salesman. He has just separated from his wife, and their two boys, 7-year old Robbie and 14-year old Peter, live with him part-time. Christine is a conceptual artist and a driver of the elderly with a hankering for Richard. Add an embittered art agent, a young girl who spends her spare time and money collecting her dowry, an elderly couple deeply in love and two teenage girls preparing to enter adulthood but with no real contemplation of what that entails and you've got an interesting mix of characters.
So flimsy as to be see-through in places, Me You and Everyone We Know is not without its merits. Granted, a fraction of the dialogue is painful, but the entire cast - especially the children - are truly charming, and the off-beat, intertwining tales are amusing and arresting enough to keep your attention. As our characters' lives pass, touch and impinge on each other with no seemingly real connection, it becomes apparent that no one really walks alone in the piece, or life for that matter. Although rather inconsequential, this is a refreshing bit of female direction in which each character finds themselves on the cusp of a significant phase of their lives, while time passes - sometimes quietly and sometimes obviously - in the background. It is all rather self-indulgent, yet comfortably self-conscious.

Review by Elaine Reilly