KAJILLIONAIRE : Tuesday 3rd November 2020.

'KAJILLIONAIRE' which I saw at my local independent cinema earlier this week, is an M-Rated American crime comedy drama film Directed and Written by Miranda July in only her third film making outing following 2005's 'Me and You and Everyone We Know' and 2011's 'The Future'. This film saw its World Premier screening at the Sundance Film Festival back in late January this year, was released Stateside in late September before going on VoD in the US from mid-October, having taken US$973K so far and garnered generally favourable Reviews. 

Two con artists, Robert Dyne (Richard Jenkins) and his wife Theresa (Debra Winger) have spent 26 years training their only daughter Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) to swindle, scam and steal at every turn in Los Angeles. The parents treat their daughter more as an accomplice to their petty thefts and scams rather than as a daughter with the family taking pride on being skimmers and scammers and living on the bare minimum income, unlike other people who worship money and try to be 'kajillionaires'. Whatever money they do scam gets split evenly three ways, and that's the way it's always been for as long as Old Dolio can remember. 

After a spate of bad luck, the family owe three months of back rent on their US$500 a month apartment, which is actually an abandoned and dilapidated office space attached to a soap factory. Fortunately, for them the owner of the soap factory, Stovik Mann (Mark Ivanir) and the adjacent office space seems fairly understanding and amenable to the family coming up with the back payments by this Friday, which then becomes Friday in two weeks time. 

This seems to be largely because the office space is in such a state of disrepair and because every day soap bubbles leak from the ceiling down the walls, which the family of three have to mop up with buckets and a tarp covering the floor. However, as time passes the family are unable to come up with rent money owing, so Old Dolio hatches a scam where they will travel to New York City, using tickets they won in a contest, and her parents will take her luggage, allowing Old Dolio to claim the airline has lost it, and so receive a US$1,575 insurance claim payout, which in turn will cover the rent. 

Following a fairly uneventful trip, Old Dolio and her parents return home on their scheduled flight. She is surprised to find them chatting and laughing with Melanie Whitacre (Gina Rodriguez), a young woman sat in the seat next to them, and even more surprised when they reveal their scam to her. At the baggage claims desk Old Dolio completes the necessary formalities for making a claim for her lost luggage, only to be told that it could take up to six weeks to process. She returns home and finds Melanie there too. 

Melanie proves to be more than accepting to their way of life and tells the family that she is an opticians assistant. She introduces them to her elderly and seemingly trusting clients, whom they rip off for small sums of cash in the form of cheques on which Old Dolio is adept at forging signatures. This goes awry when a dying man asks the family to pretend to be his family as he passes away alone at home. Old Dolio is shaken up by this experience, and is hurt when her parents immediately rush to comfort Melanie while ignoring Old Dolio herself. Using the money they have scammed from two of Melanie's aged clients, Robert decides to purchase a US$9,000 hot tub with all the bells and whistles for just a US$100 down payment. Back home, realising that Melanie has served her purpose as a partner in their schemes, the parents decide to initiate a threesome with Melanie in the hot tub (which is not plumbed in) which she reacts badly to. They are interrupted by Old Dolio, who is heartbroken to hear her mother call Melanie 'hun', which Theresa has never called her daughter by that term of endearment, and offers her the entire travel insurance money (which has subsequently come through in the form of a cheque from the insurance company) to do the same to her. Theresa refuses, but Melanie offers to call Old Dolio various terms of endearment in exchange for the US$1,575 which is accepted and so off the pair go to Melanie's apartment.

Instead of simply calling Old Dolio 'hun', Melanie offers the 'full-service' treatment to fulfil the emotional requirements which Old Dolio's parents had failed to meet down through the years. Some time later there is a knock on the door, and Old Dolio's parents have left her seventeen birthday presents outside the door to Melanie's apartment, with a note promising the eighteenth one at dinner the next evening. Old Dolio and Melanie attend dinner in an upmarket restaurant where Old Dolio's parents present her with a gold necklace and pendant and Robert stands up and gives an impassioned tearful speech and swears they will change their uncaring unloving hurtful ways

After their dinner, they return to Melanie's apartment and tuck Old Dolio into bed. Melanie, who has hidden the US$1,575 cash from the insurance money in her fuse box, remarks to Old Dolio that if her parents have stolen the money they must be monsters, while Old Dolio says if the money is still there, it is proof her parents have changed. She also comes up with a third possibility in that her parents will have left behind US$525, her third of the cash, signifying that this is the only way they can demonstrate their love for her. To Melanie and Old Dolio's surprise, the cash is all there.

The next day, Old Dolio wakes and goes into the lounge room to discover that Melanie has been completely robbed, with the entire furnishings of the apartment gone, except for the possessions in the bedroom. The only things remaining are Old Dolio's seventeen presents spread out on the floor where they were left, and, the US$1,575 is gone too. Realising the gifts are refundable because they all came from the same shop and all of the gifts still have the price tags intact with the barcode, Old Dolio and Melanie take them to the store to be returned. The total price of the items is US$485.05, until Melanie notices the gold chain and pendant hanging around Old Dolio's neck. She removes it and hands it over too for a refund, bringing the total to US$525, Old Dolio's share of the insurance money. Old Dolio and Melanie kiss as the film fades to black.

'Kajillionaire' is a quirky, whacky, unconventional and at times quite bizarre coming of age petty crime comedy film that poses more questions than it answers. For example, why did they choose to raise their only daughter without any connection, emotional attachment or endearment other than the purely transactional; why did a nice girl like Melanie stoop down to the depths of this family of no-hope grifters; why do the family live in a run down office building kipping in sleeping bags on the floor between the partitions and with soap suds running down the walls every day, and why give you only child a moniker like Old Dolio FFS???? I was frustrated by this film that goes round and round in circles until the emotional payoff at the end which felt undercooked and fails to deliver any real sense of closure. And, the film is short on laughs too. Wood is on top form here and is barely recognisable as the slant shouldered, track suit wearing, long haired and mumbling Old Dolio, and both Jenkins and Rodriguez more than hold their own in their supporting roles, but Winger is lost in the mix and for the most part sits on the periphery with little by way of contribution. One couple sat in the theatre with me at the time of my viewing walked out within the first twenty minutes never to return, which is something you don't see very often and I guess tells me that this film isn't for everyone, a fact also reinforced by the chatter I overheard as I was walking out from a group who had also sat through the film. 

'Kajillionaire' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-