Butler's Cinema Scene

“THE FUTURE” My rating: B (Opening Sept. 2 at the Tivoli)

91 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“The Future” is the second film of the summer to leave me stranded between admiration and nagging irritation.

The first was “Tree of Life” from the semi-reclusive Terrence Malick.

“The Future” springs from the non-reclusive-but-definitely-out-there mind of performance artist/writer/filmmaker/video artist Miranda July.

Like her debut film, “You and Me and Everyone We Know,” this is an extremely quirky affair that will charm some viewers and alienate others.

It’s about a midlife crisis, but not the typical Hollywood-movie midlife crisis where a guy in his 40s goes looking for thrills before returning to his wife with his tail between his legs.

No, the crisis examined here is experienced by a woman (played by the wide-eyed July), and while it has moments of oddball humor, it’s basically a very serious, even sad yarn.

Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) live in a small LA apartment in semi-Bohemian sparseness. She teaches dance to little girls. He uses a computer and phone line to provide tech support.

Theirs is a life of comfy domesticity. No frills or thrills, but pleasant enough. And they’re on the same gently oddball wavelength. Heck, they even have matching haircuts.

But Sophie and Jason realize that their days of youth are fading.

“We’ll be 40 in five years,” Sophie observes.

“Forty is basically 50,” Jason frets. “And then after 50, the rest is just loose change.”

Miranda July and Hamish Linklater

They’ve decided to take a tentative step into adulthood by adopting a cat from an animal shelter. The feline, named Paw-Paw, is undergoing treatment for a kidney disorder and so won’t be moving in with Sophie and Jason for another month. This gives the humans time to prepare for their new responsibilities as first-time pet owners. It’s got them a little freaked.

Okay, July haters, get out the knives. Because Paw-Paw the cat is the film’s narrator, voiced by July in an eentsy sing-song voice that’s somewhere between a wizened old lady and a too-cute child.

There are things about this movie I like. Paw-Paw the cat is not one of them. I’m talking nails across chalkboard.

Both give up their jobs but otherwise take different approaches to impending adulthood. Jason signs up with an environmental group, canvassing door to door to sell trees. He also befriends an old man (Joe Putterlik) who repairs and recycles household appliances and maintains a cache of handmade cards he created over the years for his beloved wife.

Sophie, though, goes overboard. This waifish, unassertive woman dangles herself in front of Marshall (David Warshofsky), a single father whom she met at the animal shelter.

In short order she’s traded her paint-peeling apartment with Jason for  Marshall’s neat suburban home. She even becomes a parent (sort of) for Marshall’s equally strange young daughter (Isabella Acres).

Poor Jason is left alone to mull this abandonment. Sophie has second thoughts.

Though “Future” has a more clearly-defined narrative than “You and Me…” it certainly isn’t conventional. It may be helpful to regard the film not so much as an example or A-to-B-to-C storytelling but as a collection of performance pieces.

There is, for example, an extraordinary sequence late in the film when a ratty yellow T-shirt follows Sophie to her new home (not unlike a lost pet) and slithers into the bedroom she shares with Marshall.

Sophie then dons the shirt upside down (putting her legs through the arm holes and pulling the bottom up over her head) and does an incredible dance in the dark.

Weird? Very. But also very beautiful.

Half the time I wasn’t sure what was going on in “The Future,” but it hooked me nevertheless.

When it wasn’t frustrating me.

| Robert W. Butler