Kajillionaire | 2020

If you come expecting the slick, high-stakes cons of Ocean’s 8 , you will be delightfully disoriented. The “crimes” of the Dynes family are painfully mundane: cheating a dry cleaner out of $12, returning expired products to a grocery store for store credit, or, in their most ambitious scheme, stealing postage from a shipping center. The true drama isn’t the heist—it’s the emotional repression. The film introduces us to Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins), two middle-aged grifters who have turned parenting into a long-term scam. They have raised their 26-year-old daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), not as a child, but as a third accomplice. Old Dolio has never been hugged, has never heard the words “I love you,” and sleeps on a yoga mat on the floor of their leaky, debt-ridden office space. She is a ghost in a bowl cut, wearing baggy men’s clothes and speaking in a flat, robotic monotone.

In the landscape of modern independent cinema, few voices are as distinctively off-kilter and deeply human as Miranda July’s. With her fourth feature film, Kajillionaire (2020), July delivers a heist movie where the loot isn’t money, but genuine human connection. It’s a film about a family of small-time grifters living on the fringes of Los Angeles, and it is as bizarre, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly beautiful as anything July has ever created.

Gina Rodriguez is the film’s secret weapon. Her Melanie is a live wire of chaotic good, and her chemistry with Evan Rachel Wood is astonishing. Where Old Dolio is a closed fist, Melanie is an open palm. Through a series of increasingly strange set pieces—including a memorable scene involving a massage table and a leaky ceiling—Melanie introduces Old Dolio to the terrifying, addictive sensation of being seen . The central metaphor of Kajillionaire is a brilliant, absurdist stroke. The family’s latest con involves renting a post office box next to a company that receives barrels of a mysterious, pink, viscous goo. When the building vibrates at a specific frequency, the goo drips through the walls into their office. The goal? To catch the goo in buckets and sell it back to the company for a reward. Kajillionaire 2020

Kajillionaire is not a crowd-pleaser in the traditional sense. It is too weird, too slow, and too sad for that. But for those who click with its frequency, it is a masterpiece. It is a film that argues that the greatest heist of all isn’t stealing money—it’s stealing back your own capacity to feel.

This goo is the movie’s visual and emotional id. It is messy, sticky, and uncontrollable—everything the Dynes are not. The film’s climax hinges on a moment of pure, liquid emotion involving this goo, a moment so strange and so tender it transcends absurdity into genuine catharsis. You will never look at industrial waste the same way again. Kajillionaire was released in the fall of 2020, a time when the world was starved for touch and human proximity. Watching it now, it feels even more prescient. It is a film about the quarantine of the soul—what happens when you are raised to believe that intimacy is a liability and that love is a con you are destined to lose. If you come expecting the slick, high-stakes cons

Miranda July has always been interested in the awkward, lonely spaces between people, but here she turns her gaze to the ultimate loner: the child who was never allowed to be a child. Evan Rachel Wood delivers a career-best performance. She sheds the glamour of Westworld to become a trembling, awkward bird of a woman, learning to fly for the first time at 26. Watch her hands—the way they hover in the air, wanting to touch but terrified of the cost.

★★★★½ (4.5/5) Where to watch: Available for rent on most major VOD platforms (as of original release; check current streaming availability). The film introduces us to Theresa (Debra Winger)

Richard Jenkins, known for his everyman warmth, is terrifyingly effective here as Robert. He speaks in a gentle, almost loving whisper while systematically robbing his daughter of her identity. He has named her “Old Dolio” to make her more memorable to the police (a fake name is harder to remember, he explains), and he treats her share of the loot as a business expense. Winger’s Theresa is a master of passive aggression, pouting when the con doesn’t go her way. Together, they form a closed loop of transactional cruelty. The film’s axis shifts with the arrival of Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), a cheerful, impulsive stranger who accidentally gets roped into the family’s biggest scheme. Melanie is everything the Dynes are not: she is tactile, spontaneous, and emotionally literate. When she sees Old Dolio flinch at the possibility of a hug, she doesn’t recoil—she pushes gently forward.