If we were dying in 30 days, we would certainly re-prioritise.” In fact, in the surreal world of Miranda July, we would stop time entirely.

The writer and director of Me and You and Everyone We Know returns with a similarly idiosyncratic account of the malaise of the young and bored, this time following a pair of young hipsters (the director herself alongside a touchingly glum Hamish Linklater) for whom the decision to adopt an injured cat, or leave it to certain death, conjures a rather disproportionate existential crisis.

Narrated by the cat (standard), the film’s ludicrous quirkiness is punctuated with disarming pathos and philosophical insight, which makes criticism of the film as a whole rather difficult. Scenes of Linklater’s supernatural manipulation of time, culminating in a magnificent summoning of the tides which could have been lifted straight out of Exodus, are as haunting as any I have seen in cinema. The cat’s finite lifespan, which one infers to be a half-baked nod to Schrödinger, is the framework upon which a calculated study of time and reality is crafted. Through the animal’s eyes, we see the terminal stagnation of the young, who throw away their lives on Facebook for fear of growing old, only to wake up and find that they are.

Miranda July can be forgiven for her many offbeat affectations, for she is intelligently self-aware, endearingly poking fun at her own dreaminess. She compares herself to a local spinster, whom she admires: “she’s totally carpe diem”. Her numerous dance scenes are as mesmerising as they are tacky, and the hopelessness with which she stands idly by, watching the world move forward without her, resonates with an angst reminiscent of The Graduate. Linklater’s hobbit-haired Jason is really just an indie upgrade on Michael Cera, but, like Cera, he captures the aloofness of the era in all his bland expressiveness.

The film’s polarisation of the blogosphere has been sensational, amassing an army of haters to rival that of Lars von Trier. The line between culture and pretension is certainly overstepped at times, but the transgression is pulled off with deference, and more than compensated by exquisite set-pieces which reek of cinematography awards. The ethereal beauty of a young girl sleeping in a grave she has dug for herself is almost unbearable, and the reification of Time into an animate yellow suit which envelopes July could surely stand alone as performance art in itself.

I wonder if the indie-realism of which we are becoming tired is deliberate, rather than a default to current expectations, perhaps serving to detach the abstract, to differentiate and glorify what we see in July’s looking-glass. The surreal is forever in shot, from the Escher drawing in their apartment to an old man holding a toy on a spring, a metronome which counts away the world’s breathless seconds, unnoticed by the characters.

Perhaps, in titling her film The Future, July had hoped that her vision of cinema might be self-fulfilling. The irony is that regardless of its quality, the film is not nearly the pioneer it purports to be. Its exploration of time, not to mention the use of creepy anthropomorphic animals, is territory trodden long ago by Donnie Darko. Nevertheless, as a study of the ennui of a generation, The Future is undoubtedly profound.

So nearly an extraordinary film, it ensnares us with gestures of philosophy, seduced into believing we are about to see something poetic, only to default back on the indie oblivion where awkward silences and meaningful looks so easily fill the minutes. July has tasted greatness, and with a Golden Bear nomination in Berlin this year, we await a masterpiece that is surely on the cards. Time will tell.