Miran­da July’s Kajil­lion­aire fol­lows a fam­i­ly of eccen­tric thieves

One of the most high-pro­file acqui­si­tions at this year’s Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, approx­i­mate­ly one thou­sand years ago, con­cerned the lat­est fea­ture from the impro­lif­ic yet con­sis­tent Miran­da July. Focus Fea­tures picked up Kajil­lion­aire in a hot­ly con­test­ed deal, and though plans for a sum­mer roll­out had to be shift­ed back when the Coro­n­avirus cri­sis broke out, the pub­lic will be able to get a look at the well-reviewed film soon. Probably.

In a release mak­ing the bold dec­la­ra­tion that July’s lat­est will be ​“in the­aters” by Sep­tem­ber, Focus unveiled the first trail­er this morn­ing. Those famil­iar with the director-writer’s oeu­vre won’t be sur­prised by the unex­pect­ed: pink foam ooz­ing out of walls, clev­er­ly pur­loined mail pack­ages, a young woman named ​“Old Dolio.”

These flour­ish­es of quirk rid­dle the por­trait of one odd fam­i­ly (father Richard Jenk­ins, moth­er Debra Winger, and daugh­ter Evan Rachel Wood) choos­ing to live on the fringes of soci­ety by scour­ing and skim­ming rather than striv­ing to make mon­ey. The bizarre way of life they’ve fig­ured out how to make work gets messy when a crop-topped inter­lop­er (Gina Rodriguez) joins the crew and stirs up some dis­tort­ed desires. Along the way, high­ly sym­bol­ic earth­quakes and absur­dist humor loosen the film’s grasp on reality.

Han­nah Wood­head, our gal on the scene in Sun­dance, wrote of the film thus­ly in her pos­i­tive review: ​“It feels passé to refer to the quirk­i­ness of July’s work (though it war­rants a chuck­le that Old Dolio’s ini­tials are ODD), so let’s instead con­cen­trate on the oth­er rich­es in this charm­ing film: the sense of acute lone­li­ness that haunts sun­ny Los Ange­les; the inevitably of being dis­ap­point­ed by your par­ents; the pecu­liar rit­u­als we per­form while try­ing to estab­lish our own identity.”

The trail­er hints at those cur­rents of long­ing and hurt, and also teas­es a snatch of the film’s boom­ing, dis­tinc­tive score cour­tesy of Emile Mosseri. But the real cen­ter­piece of the clip would be Angel Olsen’s cov­er of sad-times musi­cal stan­dard ​‘Mr Lone­ly’, per­formed with Mosseri. It sounds almost creep­i­ly inti­mate, just a lit­tle off, yet shot through with sin­cere feel­ing – a sum­ma­tion of this film if ever there was one.

Kajil­lion­aire will osten­si­bly, hope­ful­ly come to US cin­e­mas on 18 September.