Kajillionaire Review

Despite its relatively grounded premise - a dramatic comedy about a family of con artists - Kajillionaire is a deeply strange film. It's saturated by an almost surreal, dizzingly kooky atmosphere, its characters are almost all completely ridiculous, and the story is constantly shifting gears, always surrounding one loose goal but never really about it. A lot of viewers will likely be turned off by it, unable to really meet the film on its own terms, and unable to truly mine its depths for any sort of amusement or meaning.

There's something fascinating and beautiful about the seemingly endless depths that lurk beneath the film's surface, though. A goofy, deadpan comedy exterior is a thinly-layered candy coating over a story that explores some quite serious themes, from abuse both personal and generational to loneliness and alienation. The protagonist, Old Dolio Dyne, is a girl raised by two freeloading con artist Boomers, who aim to take the easiest way possible through life by scamming and stealing everything that they need and cutting every single corner possible. In their eyes, Old Dolio is little more than a tool to help them, and they seem to have purposefully raised her without any affection or tenderness to create the ultimate tool for their get rich quick schemes.

The extent to which this tendency manifests itself is both comic and upsetting. Old Dolio is constantly ridiculed by her parents, and never spoiled for anything - they split everything three ways and she has no concept of a life outside of this. The three of them live in what looks like an old office space, setting up mattresses amongst the discarded cubicles and tables and spending time every day cleaning up after the sanitation leaks that come in through the walls. Their landlord, a rather pitiful man with no emotional filter, allows this arrangement for $500 a month between all three of them, and they still miss payments regularly, ducking under the fence near his workplace every time they pass so that he won't see them.

The thing that will leave many people unsure what to make of this film is that it never really tells you what to feel - but this is something that I love about it. It shows you some things that are funny, some things that are sad and upsetting in a quiet way, and some things that might be both. Do you laugh? Do you cry? Director Miranda July never really seeks to answer these questions, instead allowing the audience to feel their own emotions from the images and events on screen, bringing their own feelings and experiences with childhood and loneliness and parenting and allowing them to fill in the gaps for themselves.

What July is more interested in is the family themselves, the eccentricities and dysfunctions that define them, and perhaps what this says about the way our society functions, particularly on a generational scale, and how it impacts the individual's pursuit of happiness and self-fulfillment. The world of the Dyne family is a purely individualistic one, the kind that is shaped by the sort of cutthroat capitalism championed by the Boomer generation. Old Dolio's parents, Robert and Theresa Dyne (played by Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger respectively) are people who seem to only care about themselves; not even truly about their daughter who helps them. They coast by spending as little money as possible and putting in the least amount of work to get the most amount of money by preying on the desperate, lonely and vulnerable in society (one particularly awful con involves them visiting lonely, elderly and dying people under the guise of companionship and stealing their money). Their vision of the ideal life is an American Dream warped by the greed of the modern age; "Everyone wants to be a kajillionaire," Robert says in one scene. "That's the dream, isn't it?" The dream isn't to have a fulfilling career, start a family and become a member of a community, but rather to make as much money as possible no matter who you have to hurt in the process.

Robert and Theresa are woefully bad at this, but that doesn't seem to matter all that much to them. They're in it for the chase, a hedonistic lifestyle that sees them somewhat off the grid and leeching off of the underbelly of society, unnoticed and unhindered as a result. Old Dolio, by contrast, has never known anything but this, and a life surrounded by pure greed has left her not only lacking meaning in her life, but unable to grasp the idea of a meaningful life in any way. She is dependent physically and emotionally on her parents, but gets no satisfaction or connection out of the relationship, leaving her isolated and alienated. To say she's socially awkward and emotionally stunted is an understatement, and it's not until she sees a video of a mother and her baby sharing a tender moment after birth that she even begins to consider that something might be missing from her life.

The plot ultimately begins when the Dyne family's landlord gives them an ultimatum; pay off their rent balance in two weeks or be evicted. They come up with a series of scams to make the $1500 they owe, and on the way they meet Melanie (played by Gina Rodriguez). Melanie is a young, adventurous woman who sees something rather charming about the eccentricities of the Dyne parents - at least, at first - and they team up to pull off a con of their own. Robert and Theresa shower Melanie with affection and her presence thoroughly shakes up the Dyne family dynamic in ways that make for brilliant screenwriting and filmmaking. Ultimately, Robert and Theresa see her as nothing more than another pretty thing to play with, another game to chase down, but their seeming affection for her awakens a fierce jealously and longing in Old Dolio as she begins to realize just what she's been missing for her whole life.

The characters are easily the high point of Kajillionaire. Robert and Theresa appear to be eccentric yet lovable old weirdos at first, but we gradually come to realize more and more that they're a very special sort of monster; a cold, unfeeling couple who care for nothing but themselves and the pleasure of exploitation. Old Dolio, on the other hand, is a socially awkward misfit; a woman who looks most at home in baggy pants and hoodies, with her long auburn hair hanging over her face as if she's hiding from the world. Evan Rachel Wood turns in an incredible performance, convincingly playing Old Dolio as someone who doesn't even seem to have been taught how to exist comfortably. She is constantly tense as if the slightest touch from another could hurt her, and she looks out of place in literally any outfit or situation. She's an incredibly relatable character, not just as a woman trying to find her place and uncomfortable in most social situations (as a trans woman I can relate), but also as a millennial brought up in a greed-centric society, told that money and success will buy us happiness in the wake of the Boomer generation's selfish hedonism, but becoming ever more aware that our lives are meaningless, that all we seem to have been made for is working and making money in an economy that doesn't even work anymore and finding ourselves increasingly cut off from the rest of humanity through depression and isolation.

In the end, it's genuine human connection that serves as Old Dolio's salvation (and homosexuality at that, much to my gay little heart's delight). Despite all of its loud eccentricities, Kajillionaire's impact is a quiet and personal one. I left the theater feeling a tumultuous cascade of emotions, but all of them were very much mine, and I found myself not talking much about the movie to anyone not because it wasn't memorable, but because those emotions seemed to be most meaningful to me and me alone. Kajillionaire will be difficult for most people to swallow, but for those willing to engage with its quieter style of comedy and emotion, it's as engaging and profound as anything released this year.