Watch Kajillionaire | TAKE ONE | London Film Festival 2020 and Film Reviews

Immediately introducing Old Dolio, a 26-year-old played by Evan Rachel Wood, and her parents Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins) at the beginning of a low-key heist, this is a family with its eccentricities. Everything they do is motivated by their next scam. Avoiding detection from security cameras comes naturally, but that’s about all; they are co-conspirators, agreeing to a three-way cut of everything, but don’t expect an affectionate hug.

In need of a payday to cover the rent on their office space home adjoining a bubble factory, they plan an airport baggage mix-up plot to claim the insurance. Meeting Gina Rodriguez’s Melanie mid-flight – who’s drawn in by the trio’s way of life – brings a change in the family dynamic as she forces a dose of reality upon the family and the film. The film brings the cult-like behaviour of the parents into sharper focus, and Old Dolio goes from a single-minded thief to someone aware of her lack of affection and personhood.

It is a film with heart, but the oddities come first. The family comically contort their bodies to avoid detection from their factory worker landlords, with Wood angling her body back ninety degrees, moving in ways that would be considered terrifying in a horror film. Her voice is heavily altered too, with Old Dolio sounding like an old-school masculine slacker, with the hair to match. She and her parents talk with an uncanny directness, as if communicating via scheming is all they know. It’s more ideological extremism than it is social ineptitude when it comes to Theresa and Robert, especially when they pretend to be a ‘normal’ family which talks about mowing the lawn; they understand normal, they just reject it.

It’s different for Old Dolio. This life is all she’s known. She attends parenting classes under the guise of being a parent herself, trying to understand the innate bonds missing from her own life. She recoils from the touch of a masseuse, unfamiliar with being cared for physically.

Melanie is chaos to the regimented trio. Her presence forces them to engage with someone unfamiliar with their way of doing things all of a sudden. Theresa and Robert are set in their ways, but for Old Dolio, there’s a world waiting; one that accepts her as a person who deserves love and agency.

Therein lies the conflict: a family unit is hard to leave behind as a child, at whatever age. Going off to find your path might be expected, but it’s also a kind of betrayal, one which involves turning your back on everything you know. It’s a film about loneliness, while also being a film about creating a new family, whatever that actually means. Walking away also means walking towards something.

That process of discovery is a familiar and personal one, but Miranda July amplifies her story with the stylistic choices. The juxtaposition of the audience surrogate Melanie, who’s warm, fashionable, and has interests outwith thievery, with the cold and objective-minded trio overstates the differences between us all to great effect. The pressure of parenting and change across generations is here too; while irresponsible in every way, Theresa and Robert aren’t awful company. The film is a learning experience for Old Dolio as her worldview expands past what she’s always known, which comes with the terrifying and thrilling realisation of how little we know, and all of the possibilities that lie ahead. For Old Dolio, that includes reckoning with what she deserves as a person – whether that’s making pancakes, dancing, or affectionately being called ‘hun’.

For some, the film’s stylistic choices will be insurmountable. But stick with it, and KAJILLIONAIRE has a big, nurturing heart; one that invites us to laugh about the messiness of families and the hope that we will turn out alright because of them and in spite of them.