This summer's film fare has been full of independent oddities, many too perky or too murky. But in sampling the quirky, Goldilocks and I found "Me and You and Everyone We Know" juuust right.

	John Hawkes stars as Richard, a newly single shoe salesman and father of two boys, in "Me and You and Everyone We Know." Click photo for larger image. "Me and You and Everyone We Know" Rating: R for sexual themes and language. Starring: John Hawkes, Miranda July, Miles Thompson and Brandon Ratcliff. Director: Miranda July. "Me and You and Everyone We Know" Web site

Things are going just wrong, however, for our hero -- a wild-eyed shoe salesman named Richard (John Hawkes). At the outset of this deliciously deviant "dramedy," Richard's wife is moving out, leaving him with their two sullen sons and a dearth of parenting skills.

Peter (Miles Thompson) and Robby (Brandon Ratcliff) -- at the not-so-tender ages of 14 and 7 -- are being relocated to a new house and neighborhood they hate. They've got a lot of unsupervised time on their hands with Mom gone and Dad at work all day, and into the void steps -- what else? -- the Internet. Idle minds are the devil's playground, but these boys are far from idle. Their time and their minds are occupied by a devilish chat room, where the chat is scat -- as in scatological.

Richard is preoccupied, in general, by the shoe store and, in particular, by a customer who is rapidly becoming a stalker. She is Christine (played by Miranda July, the film's writer-director), an eccentric "Eldercab" driver. That's just her day job. Her real vocation is video-performance artist -- a struggling and frustrated one, to be sure. Christine can't get the local art gallery's curator to pay attention to her in-your-face videos, and she can't get Richard to pay attention to her in-his-face advances.

If Richard and Christine are the "You" and "Me" of these nouveau screwball title characters, "Everyone" else is engaging, too -- especially the boys. But our concern for them and their increasingly ominous scat-chatting is spelled -- and leavened -- by a parallel interest in their oversexed neighbors, such as teen tarts Rebecca and Heather, who are seducing (and/or being seduced by) a guy who writes dirty messages in his front window. These gals will eventually set their sexual sights on Peter, in one of the funniest and most racy scenes.

Richard is busy keeping track of his sons and recovering from self-immolating his own hand -- an act of bizarre protest against his wife's dumping him. Christine, when not chasing Richard or worrying about a forgotten goldfish bag atop the car in front of her, is busy trying to fulfill the art gallery's pretentious criteria for her video exhibit. ("Could it be made in any era or just now? What does it tell us about the digital culture?")

Sex is on everybody's mind except Richard's. But July's sexuality is air-conditioned, not overheated, thanks to the whimsically stylized, elliptical dialogue she employs. Indeed, it is her original, gently unpredictable poetic voice that elevates this Sundance product from start to finish and lets her get away with politically incorrect fun-poking at pedophilia.

It's about disconnect, not perversion. With these half-real, half-farcical characters, if the shoe fits -- in or out of Richard's footwear store -- chances are, they'll reject it in favor of a pair that doesn't.

The film's best line comes at the expense of the junior senator from New York, when a fellow shoe salesman, pondering Richard's problems and customers, concludes: "This is why you don't want a village raising your children."