is dainty and quaint in a good way. It's a dark comedy about anomie, an exploration of those difficult years between being young, being old and just being. July wrote, directed, and co-stars as Sophie, a 35-year-old dancer who teaches ballet to little girls and lives with Jason (Hamish Linklater), a pleasant young man who runs a computer-repair service from their small Los Angeles apartment. Neither seems to be doing much, and furthermore, they look the same, as if Jason were just another aspect of Sophie's vacancy. It's the unformed appearance of people who are drifting aimlessly. We've met such people before in film, but their purposelessness seems especially unadorned in The Future : It's part of July's unforced sense of whimsy. "I wish I was just a notch prettier," Sophie says, looking into the mirror with characteristic melancholy. "I'm right on the edge, you know, where it's up to a person to decide for themselves. I have to make the case with each new person." It's an ideal description of both July's pixie near-beauty and the solipsism of a lost generation. Sophie and Jason have decided to adopt a cat -- this is where Paw Paw comes in -- but they have to wait 30 days. They calculate that the cat may live another five years, necessitating their staying home to look after it. By then they'll be 40, which is basically 50, and after 50, Jason says, "the rest is just loose change. Not enough to get what