Miranda July's latest film 'Kajillionaire' is a heartfelt and humorous Queer delight

Arts

Sep 21

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In Los Angeles, there exists a myth that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and earn their success. Everyone is tanned, conventionally picturesque, and in a state of inexplicable California bliss. In reality, the city is relentless, the heat, traffic, and sunshine never let up. It is here that a family of misfits make a home for themselves, however unconventional. Here is where the uncanny and profound story of the Dynes unfold.

Kajillionaire is a story about a family of con-artists. Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins) and their only daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), are the Dynes, a trio of grifters who hustle and finesse through life, barely able to keep their heads above water. The Dynes are outsiders, content to live on the fringe of society. During one of their biggest heists, Theresa and Robert are charmed by a stranger, Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), who attaches herself to the family. This addition brings new problems and tensions into their secluded lifestyle, and challenges their entire world view.

Writer and Director Miranda July achieves a Dickensian sense of comedy, blending existential and real dangers with humorous scenarios and recognizable characters. All the shit hits the fan at once, they are constantly running full-speed into roadblocks, swinging away in a sandpit. Time works against the Dynes. Foam literally seeps through apartment walls on a schedule, an impending tremor recurs throughout the film. In reaching for their desires, people do despicable things to each other. They are in each other’s way. No one is above judgment, and yet I am rooting for everyone to be ok.

Even the Dynes’ landlord is cutting corners, perpetually on the verge of a breakdown. The sun is always out, mockingly so. Everyone is justifiably disillusioned with the town, no one is completely at peace, and everyone is hungry for the next opportunity.

In the isolated environment that parents Theresa and Robert made, the role of the family is queered. Old Dolio is molded into a scamming tool for their half-baked plans. They interact with each other with no pretense, no regard for assumed social contracts. The only rules are the ones of their own creation.

Old Dolio must negotiate self-interest and personal accountability among selfish people. Their interdependency becomes suffocating. Amidst the family’s training and manipulation, she has lost herself, her development as an individual brought to a complete halt. The love language she learned from her parents was a false one, or at least one that leaves her unfulfilled.

Old Dolio takes her 26-year-old body and starts over, questions what she knows. She knows her body in some instances can become a malleable sign of class and status, an object to be dressed up or down, to indicate designated positions of power. The body is adaptable. Sometimes, her body is a well-oiled machine, able to maneuver around security cameras with ease.

But when the body is not under stress, when it is not playing the role of lanky cat burglar, how does it dance? How does the body experience pleasure? A loved one reaches a hand out. How does she want to be touched? Old Dolio must rediscover what it means to be in her own skin, and her connection with Melanie starts that journey.

The queer relationship in the film is refreshing in its sincerity. There is not much to be made from it, other than that gender and sexuality, sometimes, just is. “Perhaps the movie says a lot about gender by never speaking about it, but leaving it undefined, giving it room to exist on its own terms”, says July. The characters are allowed to simply exist, they feel authentic, unquestionably, spectacularly, real.

Kajillionaire asks questions that are continually relevant for queer young people. What is a family? Can it be forced, put on like a mask? How real does love have to be to feel it? What do you want from each other? When your foundation begins to crack, when the ground shakes beneath you, when you are at your wit’s end, out of ideas to make it work, who will you become?

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Nicholas Goodly is an Atlanta-based poet and the writing editor of Wussy Magazine.

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