Miranda July dreams up a con family in ‘Kajillionaire’
Miranda July doesn’t seem to have fair-weather fans. There are those who are obsessed. And there are those who don’t know who she is. There is no in between.
Even after acclaimed films like “Me and You and Everyone We Know” and “The Future,” the author and director is still grateful when someone knows her work. It’s why she took note when Dede Gardner, the Oscar-winning producer of “Moonlight” and “12 Years a Slave,” wrote her a “beautiful” and “poetic” letter about her novel “The First Bad Man.”
“That’s not your average Hollywood producer,” July said. “I was like, huh, I guess when I finish this script, that may be the first person I send it to.”
The script in question was “Kajillionaire,” a story about a family of grifters in Los Angeles. It came to her one morning when in a half-conscious state she saw three characters, two women with long hair and a man. She was careful to not fall back asleep and instead to write her idea down.
Soon enough, Gardner was over at July’s house agreeing to make her film.
It was, July said, the first time she didn’t have to spend any time looking for money.
Like July’s other films, “Kajillionaire,” which opened in theaters Friday, is utterly sincere, a little surreal and quietly crushing. And, of course, it’s wholly original.
The film follows scammers Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa Dyne (Debra Winger) and their 26-year-old child Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) in their strange, cheap Los Angeles life, foraging the urban landscape for survival. The decaying office space they rent for sleeping is adjacent to a bubble factory that often spills over into their home. And their routines are upended when a local extrovert, Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), joins their odd clan.
The experience was profound for Rodriguez, who found July to be exacting and mystical.
“She’s just a quiet giant. A fragile champ. She has this dichotomy of two different energies. Her temperament is so calm but then she’s got this explosive art and that’s just surging through her,” Rodriguez said. “You just knew that you were in the hands of someone magical.”
The film got raves when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, but the cast has also found it to be strangely reflective of the current moment, too.
“So much of it is about intimacy and connection and being devoid of touch and isolation,” Wood said. “We’re all strange versions of Old Dolio right now.”