NEWS: Me and You and Miranda July

Her trajectory from punk clubs and cinematheques to scripting, directing, and starring in a delicately complex romantic comedy might seem stretchy for another artist, but not so for July; her earlier works use innovative formal means to explore the contours of human relationships. In her short Haysha Royko (2003), July places morphing blobs of color over seemingly documentary video images of two adults and a child waiting at an airport, as if the shifting shapes map out a secret play of psychic auras. In Getting Stronger Every Day (2002), tales of alien abduction mingle with a boy's memories of abuse, and a young girl fits her soft toy into another floating color-form; the shapes match like a moment of love or realization and precipitate a deeply affecting synthesized crescendo. For Me and You, the experimental visual techniques are gone, but the web of feelings they represent melts invisibly back into the script and performances.

In Getting Stronger Every Day (2002), tales of alien abduction mingle with a boy's memories of abuse