What if someone sent you a text message and it arrived in person, delivered by a stranger, with the works — crying, hand holding, and colorful language. This may seem like some weird idea for a movie — and it is that — but it's also a very-real app. You can send and deliver these in-person text messages in San Francisco through Miranda July's
Somebody App.
We've become accustomed to Miranda July's public-involved art pieces, it was just last year we opted into her email exchange between famous people and their friend and families on various life topics titled "
We Think Alone," but you may be more familiar with her 2005 full-length film
Me and You and Everyone We Know. And this app, and accompanying short film, are very much July — the film is a good place to start in understanding this odd app.
The short film starts out with a freckle-faced, red-headed teenage girl sending her boyfriend a break-up message while he readies a picnic (presumably for the two of them) in a park; a nearby "somebody," in this case an athletic black man, receives the text for Caleb, along with his image, and proceeds to sit down at the edge of the blanket and (through fake tears) read her message. The movie continues on from there, unrolling features of the app as it goes, such as rating the message delivery-person, and including items the message delivery-person should do, such as fist bump, hug, and even kiss, the friend/lover/enemy you're sending the message to.
