Kajillionaire

This is going to be a tough one to review. Which I think is exactly how filmmaker and author, Miranda July, intended it. Though, on the surface, it’s pretty basic to describe, there’s a lot going on that can’t really be explained in my limited vocabulary or complete lack of psychological frame of reference. Suffice it to say that this coming-of-age dramedy focuses on a twenty-six-year-old woman played by an actress in her mid-thirties. Grown-ass adults not usually the subject of coming-of-age tales, of course, unless said human was kept in one of those suffocating off-the-grid trope worlds that movie scripts writers love so much. Though, unlike, say, a Nell, this one was raised by a pair of paranoid, conspiratory grifters smack-dab in the middle of Los Angeles. And her name is… Old Dolio. Yes, that is her legal name.

Alright, here’s the setup. The aforementioned Old Dolio Dyne (Evan Rachel Wood) lives with her parents in a room off an industrial soap factory where one of the walls weeps suds once a day, which requires them to gather the bubbles so their domicile doesn’t flood out. The family lives hand-to-mouth by pulling small cons that go under the radar. Between cons they seemingly check pay phone coin returns and scavenge whatever they can wherever they can. They seemingly walk around the busy city mostly unnoticed by anyone, owing to the fact they present as just three innocuous nobodies. The father, Robert (Richard Jenkins), clearly chooses to live this subculture life in order to stay off the radar of what he deems the overwhelming security state. His paranoia and delusions feel more stubbornly idealistic than mental illness. Along for the ride — and presumably on board with this lifestyle — is the mom, Theresa (Debra Winger). She seems to have some sort of Holden Caulfield issue where everyone living their materialistic, “normal” lives are just fakes and phonies. Our assumption, watching the emotionless and haphazardly-styled Old Dolio follow her parents around, is that she was never traditionally educated or socialized in a school of any kind. And was presumably used as a prop for her parent’s scams for the entirety of her life, until she was old enough to pull her own weight and earn her one-third of any haul. A deal that her parents now have with her as an equal partner to their grift. Not so much a daughter, but more of a partner and necessary element to help them scrape.

In the midst if an airline luggage insurance scam that Old Dolio has concocted, which should get them the $1,500 they need to pay off the late rent on their room, the parents befriend a young woman on the plane name Melanie (Gina Rodriguez). A woman whom we have to assume is about the same age as Old Dolio — but is, once again, played by an actress who is in her late thirties. Anyhow, she is bored at her mundane job and is apparently a fan of the Ocean’s Eleven movies and, when she learns about their grift, wants in. And, for a reason we only later learn about, the parents let her in on their cons. Sadly, treating her more warmth and care than their own actual daughter. A development that confuses, infuriates and weirdly intrigues Old Dolio. Through a series of cons, we see the relationship develop between Melanie and Old Dolio, exposing Old Dolio to a woman who actually has a close, loving relationship with her own mother and an almost mothering affection for Old Dolio (once Melanie realizes how much of this is missing in Old Dolio’s life). The narrative gives us some admittedly heavy-handed examples of other family dynamics to contrast those of the Dyne family’s weirdness, but it really comes down to Evan Rachel Wood’s blank character playing against Rodriguez’s ray of sunshine. And what happens when one-third of a money haul with no accompanying love isn’t enough.

Ultimately, this film comes down to Wood. The actress, not the material. It’s her coming-of-age story that is at hand. Can she break free from the mini-cult into which she was born? Can she put into context the feelings she’s having for Melanie above and beyond her being the doorway through which she can step? Can we, through her performance, feel that softening from automaton to a person who might be willing and worthy of love from another human? While I’m not sure the film itself gives quite enough runway to develop the emotional and romantic relationship between Old Dolio and Melanie, Wood does indeed do her darnedest to bring it to life on screen. And while Rodriguez doesn’t need to go through this metamorphosis, her warmth and naturalistic performance is a perfect balance to Wood’s low, rumbling cadence. July does do a great job at wrapping up the narrative, leaving us with a continuing understanding of the parent’s credo and enforcing that they do, in fact, live by it. But that it’s now on Old Dolio to decide if she wants to continue to be part of the enterprise or make her own way in the world. Does human connection and love win out? We shall see.