The Future

Miranda July stars as a 30-something contemplating the limitations of a lifespan in her wildly inventive second film.

Brimming with absurdity, abstraction and revelation, The Future tells the tale of a 30-something couple Jason (Hamish Linklater) and Sophie (Miranda July). Their lives are set on an (un)easy cruise control when they decide to adopt a wounded cat, Paw-Paw (playfully voiced by July).

The adoption process is delayed by a month for Paw-Paw to recover from surgery, and during this discrete window of time, Jason and Sophie are plunged into a seemingly new world full of action, doubt, contemplation and reckless abandon.

Curator’s note

From 2006 to 2007, Miranda July wrote and performed her theatre work Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About, which was staged at The Kitchen in New York City. At the end of its brief run, July decided to retire the work, transforming key parts into her sophomore film The Future.

July describes The Future as a horror, but this should really be taken with a grain of salt. The film is too unpredictable to follow any genre conventions – something it would probably wear as a badge of honour. Instead, it might be better described as a relationship roller-coaster: capricious, surreal, idiosyncratic and fizzing with a feeling that anything could happen.

The Future made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

– Reece Goodwin, Curator (Film & TV)