A family of scam artists take a young woman under their wing.
Review by
Ren Zelen
Directed by: Miranda July
Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez, Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger
Kajillionaire is writer/director Miranda July’s
first feature in nine years and might seem, at first, to be a
comedy-drama about a family of small-time grifters. However, as might be
expected, July soon introduces us to bizarre characters whose strange
life choices she uses as an opportunity to offer observations about
society, the illusion of the ‘American Dream’, dysfunctional family
relationships, individual loneliness, and the fear of intimacy.
In Kajillionaire, Evan Rachel Wood plays Old Dolio, a withdrawn 26-year-old who
still lives with her parents, Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert
(Richard Jenkins), but looks young enough to convincingly wear
the uniform of a catholic schoolgirl, which she is sometimes required to
do when participating in the feeble scams her parents manage to think
up.
The family stay away from CCTV cameras and try to keep off the grid. We
are never made aware as to why or when Theresa and Robert chose to have
a child and then live this unconventional, hand-to-mouth lifestyle.
Their precarious existence lands them in dire straits as they owe months
of rent on their bolt hole in an abandoned office building, which
regularly floods in foaming bubbles.
They have to raise the rent money by various schemes, such as buying
goods on credit then selling or returning them, stealing packages from
the local post office or substituting themselves for skiving workers who
can’t be bothered to turn up to courses.
Daughter Old Dolio (named after an old man who Theresa and Robert
unsuccessfully tried to persuade to leave them money in his will), is
upset by the appearance of Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), a confident
but bored mall employee who is excited by the idea of joining them in
their cons. Melanie is vivacious and imaginative and soon endears
herself to Theresa and Robert and challenges Old Dolio’s role as
daughter in her dysfunctional family unit.
Unlike them, Melanie is grounded in a normal family life and soon sees
that the con-man lifestyle isn’t nearly as glamourous as portrayed in
the movies, and how, because of her odd upbringing, Old Dolio has a sad
lack of social skills and is disengaged from the world around her.
Old Dolio has been treated merely as a business partner and taught to
cheat her way from one minor theft to the next, sharing all gains with
her parents in a three-way split. Strangely, her parents seem incapable
of showing her any form of affection or providing any genuine human
connection.
Although initially Melanie creates only a feeling of rivalry and
jealousy in Old Dolio, she also awakens a sense of all the tender,
emotional and even sexual sensations the young woman has been missing.
Certain events come to a head which allow Melanie to remove Old Dolio
from her parents. She then hits upon a ruse that will enable her to
retroactively offer some of the fun, compassion and maternal affection
that Old Dolio was only made aware of during a parenting class that she
attended to make a few quick bucks from an absentee.
The principal actors Wood, Winger and Jenkins are all asked to deliver
idiosyncratic performances, affecting limps, stilted speech patterns and
various other quirks, but what is interesting about
Kajillionaire is how quickly director July and her cast
acclimatise us to the narrative’s unconventional situation through their
deft world-building.
Once we buy into Kajillionaire’s world and get on the wavelength of its characters we are able to
appreciate its humour and its pathos and empathise with Old Dolio’s
dawning realisation about her lost childhood and about what she may have
been excluded from and understand her frustration with the way her
parents have treated her.
Certain themes start to emerge - dealing with identity, with roots and
belonging, and the difficulties of finding human connection in the
emptiness of modern life. In one unexpectedly poignant vignette a home
invasion scam forces Melanie and the family into an odd act of
compassion, as they are confronted with the sad realities of loneliness,
separation, and mortality.
July excels in creating peculiar characters and unconventional plots
and placing them in a credible world. Despite her unconventional
storylines and eccentric sense of humour, July almost always provides
some profound reflections on life and human interactions. All of her
skills are evident in Kajillionaire, and refreshingly, we can never guess precisely where her story’s
unpredictable turns are going to take us. There remains space to
interpret this unique journey and its enigmatic characters and steal
from them some life lessons we may have taken for granted.
Kajillionaire is on Netflix
UK/ROI now.