The Future (2011, M)

Dir: Miranda July, USA/Germany, 91mins, digital

Sophie is a dance teacher. Jason does IT tech support from home. They are comfortably in love and decide it’s time to start a family – and so go to the lost pets shelter to select a cat. But Paw-Paw the cat’s just had surgery and needs a few weeks to recuperate before he can go home. The weeks in between (narrated by Paw-Paw – played by the film’s star and director; dressed in bandaged cat paws and speaking in feline stream of consciousness) reveal the real reason Sophie and Jason want a pet – to avoid their inner sense of professional failure, of premature mid-life crisis, of the future that’s in store even for Gen Xs like them. Writer, Performance artist and American indie auteur Miranda July’s new feature is a light – almost daggy – piece of Los Angeles magic realism. Yet it’s still pregnant with meaning, purring with mystery and wistful regret, and wonderfully ‘cat-esian’ in its visual non sequitur and counter-intuition.