Just about once every year now there’s been a fresh, romantic, light-hearted yet utterly uplifting comedy that just leaves you feeling happy for the rest of the week. In 2001 it was Amelie, 2002 had Punch-Drunk Love, 2003 finished with Love Actually and in 2004 it was Garden State. This year, it’s Me and You and Everyone We Know.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s first director Miranda July who plays the lead role of Christine, a bright, innocent, artistic girl who, channeling Amelie, has somehow missed out on love in the midst of her dreaming of it. Things change when she meets Richard (John Hawkes) a shoe salesman and recently separated father of two. What does she see in this off-kilter guy who has recently burnt his own hand intentionally? We don’t know, but we believe it, and we love it.

It’s brightly lit and crowded in the mall where Richard works, but Christine hears nothing and sees nothing but a spotlight on him. A day-dream, a dream of love, Christine is in love with love but finds it is as difficult to pin down as the beam of light she’s casting. Richard, now anxious about the future of his boys, leads a simple life but is “prepared for amazing things to happen.” Me and You and Everyone We Know succeeds in being unordinary by finding the magic in the ordinary.

Everyone is looking deep into the future. In an early encounter, Christine and Richard see how short-sighted seeing things short terms really is. More importantly, they come to recognize the shallowness inherent in the pursuit of instant gratification. Christine is willing to wait for Richard to “feel to old to drive” because she knows that, like the old man she drives around, settling for an unwanted life brings heartache of a deeper form in the end.

Heather (Natasha Slayton) and Rebecca (Najarra Townsend), perfectly depicted as superficial girls with half a face filled with bad make-up, never see beyond doors of the neighbor’s on either side of them. In stark contrast is the appropriately anachronistically named Sylvie (Carlie Westerman), whole is creating a dowry for herself of household objects that will probably fail the test of time despite her search for the contrary. Sylvie is thinking of anything but the present, but is limited by her understanding of the current culture – as her recitations of common advertisements suggests.

Richard’s son, Peter (Miles Thompson), is caught between the two worlds, but finds a greater interest in Sylvie’s innocence and earnestness. Indeed, innocence is the name of the game. When we’re not getting all we would ever want of it in Christine, we are touched and humored by the effects of Richard’s younger son, Robby (Brandon Ratcliff) on all he encounters. Andrew (Brad Henke), Richard’s neighbor and co-worker is also preserved by his innocence – despite his antics to the contrary. The perverse is ever present throughout the film, yet it is constantly folding to the stronger, sweeter smell of pure innocence.

Me and You and Everyone We Know really is about everyone we know. There’s a community here. Like any community there are dangers at every doorstep, as well as neighbors willing to lend a hand. There are dangers to be had in the making of acquaintances, but there are even greater dangers in failing to do so. Richard realizes, as Christine sits in his car, that he doesn’t know her. Andrew doesn’t know the girls he is inviting to his house, Robby doesn’t know the stranger he chats online with, Robby doesn’t know his neighbor Sylvie, and Michael (Hector Elias) and his love, Ellen (Ellen Geer), don’t know each other. Despite their proximity, they fail to see each other because they’re always keeping each other at a distance. When they finally open up to each other and genuinely face each other, then they begin to see the reality in each other.

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