Until very recently, I forgot I wrote a longer review on Miranda July’s feature directorial debut. Back when I first posted this, it was rare I went longer on films that weren’t actively playing in theaters, and I sadly didn’t get around to this lovely work until it crossed into the home video sphere.

Me and You and Everyone We Know is the kind of movie you show to someone to explain what you mean when you say “independent film.” Not because of where they dollars for the film stock came from, but because of the feel of the finished product. In much of the same way that “indie rock” describes the sound of the music rather than the size of the corporation behind the label, people who express love for independent cinema aren’t actually talking about the corporate structure (or lack thereof) hiding Wizard-like behind the arty logo that opens the film. More likely, they’re excited about the presence of a certain kind of character, a deep well of quirks and jagged philosophies. They’re probably thinking of dry, artfully obscure dialogue delivered with the rhythm of a skipping stone. And then there’s the willful, almost defiant lack of polish, a minor, endearing awkwardness to some of the staging.

All those qualities are abundantly present in Everyone We Know the first feature film written and directed by Miranda July, a multi-media and performance artist with enough renown to have planted her artistic flag at various times at the Guggenheim and the Whitney. July herself plays a woman who is trying to get her art shown at a local gallery. More importantly, she’s trying to develop a relationship with a department store shoe salesman, very well played by everyone’s favorite hardware Jew, John Hawkes. Swirling around these characters are a full cast of fellow sad margin-dwellers, sometimes connected through Altmanesque overlap and sometimes connected by Crash-like coincidence.

Generally speaking, July constructs her plots and subplots well, firmly establishing the characters to help make their subsequent decisions and exposed weaknesses fully understandable. A singular exception is an art gallery curator, who is primarily set up for ridicule, especially with a final, particularly potent humiliation at the hands of the filmmaker. The rest of the characters feel well-observed and earn July’s empathy. The curator character feels inserted for little more than long-festering revenge for some artworld slight.

Thematically, July’s film is about the myriad of ways in which we humans desperately reach out to one another for a little bit of affection. Yes, there’s surprisingly casual sexuality as a mussed placeholder for deeper connections (this is another earmark of independent cinema, one of the more tiresome ones at that), but there’s also the role-playing, the projected personas, the hungry, hopeful grasps at moments of opportunity and the flares of jealousy and anger when things don’t fall precisely into place. Everything July puts on screen speaks in some way to this theme and the unity of her vision, the forceful confidence of her voice is thrilling and fascinating.

Of course, these are the other qualities, maybe the most important qualities, that make us love independent cinema.