Filmmaker Miranda July turns cat adoption into a meditation on mortality in The Future.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

SAN FRANCISCO — Miranda July is kind of a magician. She may never saw anyone in half, but she can take a story about a thirty-something couple adopting an injured cat and dramatically transform it into an allegory about the internet generation’s fear of growing up.

In the writer/director’s latest film, her first feature since 2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, she stars as Sophie, a woman confronted with the possibility of not accomplishing all her lifetime goals after she and her boyfriend adopt an injured cat.

The scenario doesn’t really make sense unless you have the keen observational skills and knack for dialog that draw fans to July (or drive her detractors mad, take your pick).

When Sophie and her boyfriend, Jason (played by Hamish Linklater), realize the cat they’re saving — Paw-Paw, also the film’s narrator — could live until they hit their 40s, they decide to spend 30 days trying to do great new interesting things before they take on a new level of responsibility and, by extension, full adulthood.

It’s a topic inspired by the filmmaker’s own life.

‘Wow, if we do what we just said we’re going to do, we’re going to die on each other.’

“I got married in the time I was writing this movie, which was not something that I would’ve foreseen me doing,” July, who married director Mike Mills in 2009, told Wired.com in an interview at San Francisco’s Four Seasons hotel. “And it very much brought up these issues of mortality and finiteness. It’s like, ‘Wow, if we do what we just said we’re going to do, we’re going to die on each other.’”

One of the ways July’s character focuses on her new creative endeavors is to shut off the internet. In a humorous interlude, Sophie and Jason scramble to get anything they might need from the web before their connection gets shut down. The director notes that while she’s in no way not in favor of the internet, she thinks going online can be highly distracting when it comes to coming up with new ideas.

However, in The Future, Sophie’s creative endeavor is attempting to score a YouTube hit with a series of dance videos. It’s a contradiction-laden situation that rings true for July, who has launched online projects like Learning to Love You More.

“You want to be watched, you want to be seen, yet in order to make something to be seen you have to turn it off,” July said when asked about Sophie’s need to step away from the computer to find online fame. “It’s almost like if you look at it enough you’ll find yourself, you know? But then it could only be a movie of you looking at the internet.”

It’s a compelling and valid point, one of many in The Future. It’s hard not to chew on July’s ideas for a few days after watching the film, which finds its most poignant moments in boyfriends who stop time in order to avoid facing things to come, and cats that would accept an eternity of maybes instead of hearing never.

Why would a filmmaker with July’s meta-narrative approach create a character that wants to play in the sandbox populated by living-room-filmingDougie-dancers?

“This isn’t really in the movie, but for someone who’s fantasized for decades about young women picking up cameras, it’s a confusing thing,” July admits, referencing YouTube videos that get popular for less-than-artistic reasons. “It’s like, ‘Well they are doing it, so that’s good, but … I’m hoping it’s very beta. Like, ‘This is what we did at the very beginning, can you believe it?’ Like cave paintings.”

The Future, rated R, is playing in select cities and expands to new markets (including San Francisco) on Aug. 12.