My favourite moment in Kajillionaire, the third film from performance artist and indie darling Miranda July, has almost nothing to do with the general reality of the plot -but is a crucial moment for the lost and downtrodden young thief Old Dolio, played by Evan Rachel Wood. She and Gina Rodriguez’s Melanie are in a dark convenience store bathroom when an earthquake hits. Old Dolio panics, gets angry, confesses some secrets, before she’s convinced she and Melanie have died, and her ravings suddenly turn existential as she’s hit by an epiphany. As this happens, specks of light gradually appear on the pitch black screen until we find ourselves looking at a wonderful field of stars, shimmering nicely against Old Dolio’s excited musings. It wasn’t until after the film that I realized this is what she was seeing, a clarity and grace and even a joy so repressed by a childhood lost to petty crime.
Kajillionaire is the story of Old Dolio, named after a hobo who unexpectedly won the lottery in the hopes that her parents could get some of the winnings. Those parents, played by Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins, initiated her into their grifting operation from a very young age, never treating her as a daughter as much as an accomplice -resulting in a stunted maturity, antisocial attitude, and a deep codependency that she’s never been able to escape. July imbues a lot of little eccentricities to their lifestyle, such as in the precision of their grift technique and the fact that they live in a crummy office space next to a soap factory -frequently having to clean the suds off the wall- on which they’re behind on even a minimal rent. It’s a very bizarre existence within the poor, seedy part of L.A. that also formed the backdrop of Tangerine. And Old Dolio especially feels like a fabrication, a kind of exaggerated caricature who couldn’t possibly exist outside a comedy. I suppose there may be some truth to that, but within this heightened context is a bitter pill about the effects of neglectful parenting.
Old Dolio has never known intimacy, or tenderness as the film may put it. All her life she’s been essentially a pawn in her parents’ schemes, and though they appreciate the skills they’ve cultivated in her for forging and pick-pocketing and such, they’ve never intoned any kind of love towards her. She’s emotionally deadened by this, sheltered and confused with the world, and unable to articulate her own expression. Wood plays her as something of an urban Tarzan, an introverted near-feral twenty-something struggling to understand, yet compelled by loving human connections. It starts when she sits through a maternity class as part of a plan and watches a video emphasizing the innate connection between a newborn and their mother -something she’s never felt with her own.
The circumstances may appear cartoonish, but the rottenness of Old Dolio’s parents is viscerally real. Nothing they do or say is ever genuine, and though they split everything three ways it’s clear that at least mum and dad are only in it for themselves. They’re also not very good con artists, and the dad is especially rather dumb. I recognize in them the kind of characters who sometimes show up in my day job, the dad especially in his undue confidence, faux intellectualism, and awkward social tendencies. It might be the most unlikable, and possibly grossest I’ve ever seen Jenkins play (he’s usually such a warm and genial guy), and Winger isn’t a lot better, as the pair terrifically showcase the nuances of these scumbag parents. While their grift may tend unbelievable, their personalities and attitudes, and the deplorable irresponsibility with which they ‘raised’ Old Dolio certainly are not.
They are unforgivable, and the maladjustment they wrought on their daughter underscores even the most ridiculous scenes, so that you feel immensely for her and long for her escape -both physically and psychologically. The deciding factor in this is Rodriguez’s Melanie, recruited into a few schemes with the end goal of the family scamming her too. She’s a wrench in their dynamic and it has a stronger effect on Old Dolio than the others. There’s a very palpable sexual tension between the two young women, Old Dolio clearly attracted to Melanie but unsure how to deal with it, and the empathetic Melanie just drawn to Old Dolio’s insecurity and vulnerability. You get the sense Old Dolio is what keeps Melanie participating in these low stakes heists and that Melanie is effecting the revelations for Old Dolio that she deserves better; that human closeness need not be artificial as she’s been taught. Melanie shows her kindness and love, and thus is her emancipator.
July herself is in love with the weirdness of her story and hones in on particular images and compositions. The trio instinctively ducking every time they pass the low wall of their tenant (Old Dolio always doing it as a limbo) for instance, or the routine of Old Dolio’s aerobics on their regular mail-stealing endeavours that comes back in a really cute way near the end, or the flooding suds down their wall that symbolize the unsustainability of their lifestyle. And the costuming choices are excellent too, with the family all wearing clothes that believably look swiped from some goodwill bin, and Old Dolio especially wearing layers which alongside that long hair down the sides of her face effectively hides her features from a frightful and judgmental world. Melanie’s liberal, modestly expensive fashion is such a blunt contrast to this, something addressed in text with Old Dolio fascinated by her false nails and “distracted” by her clothing’s comparative revealing sexuality. It’s a significant part of the film, this conscientiousness of the characters’ appearance and how they dress -Old Dolio’s baggy pants and jacket being a natural extension of her personality- and it’s consistently interesting.
There’s a degree of restraint to Kajillionaire evidenced by certain throwaway scenes and jokes (such as one scene in a massage room in which Old Dolio is unusually sensitive to human touch). July is far less transgressive here than she’s known to have been in the past (Me and You and Everyone We Know especially comes to mind). But she remains just as interested in those lesser explored, complicated corners of human relationships and that search for understanding and love. Kajillionaire doesn’t always measure up to such themes and is certain to turn a few people off to its oddities, but it is a work of great affection that speaks to a particular kind of loneliness in an intensely endearing and encouraging way.
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