Madeline's Madeline (2018)
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Review #1,579 |
THE SCOOP
Director: Josephine Decker
Cast: Helena Howard, Molly Parker, Miranda July
Plot: A theater director's latest project takes on a life of its own when her young star takes her performance too seriously.
Genre: Drama / Experimental
Awards: Nom. for Audience Award - Best of Next! (Sundance)
Runtime: 93 mins
Rating: M18 (passed clean) for nudity and sexual references
International Sales: Visit Films
Singapore Distributor: Anticipate Pictures
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: NO)
This is a tough film to grapple with even for a seasoned cinephile, but I believe it will turn out to be one of the year’s most original and surprising works. Writer-director Josephine Decker, the artistic force behind this singular film (her third fiction feature), has made something that does not appear to have any precedent.
Therefore, in a way, the film feels impenetrable and beyond reach yet it is also strangely alluring, as if it is trying to hypnotise you to surrender your body and soul into its tantalising within. Once you have given yourself in, there’s no escape. It is probably like how those men felt when they surrendered themselves to Scarlett Johannsson’s sexy alien in the polarising experimental sci-fi drama Under the Skin (2013).
Experimental is also an apt descriptor for Madeline’s Madeline, and so are words like impressionistic, meta, hallucinatory or illusive. Its title also suggests that the word ‘mad’ is one of many ingredients in this peculiar concoction that sees the eponymous character (played with such naturalism by Helena Howard in her acting debut) trying to navigate her turbulent teenage-hood by way of the arts.
The young star of a local stage production whose director is working on a new project, Madeline finds herself toggling between the fictive and reality, taking her role way too seriously as she immerses herself—and occasionally self-destructs—through the course of numerous rehearsals. Her anxious, overly-concerned mother bears the brunt of her daughter’s mood swings and crazy antics in a love-hate relationship that possibly requires some hardcore soul-searching.
Decker has fashioned a highly-sensorial work, creating a visual phantasmagoria that mimics the irrational and the chaotic workings of an unstable mind, while also privileging the film’s heady soundscapes. Madeline’s Madeline is also madly-elliptical as plot gives way to subjective experience and vice-versa, with the fragmentary style blurring the boundaries amongst the performer, performance and performative art.
In this light, there are three levels to reckon with: firstly, Howard’s screen portrayal of a pubescent and angsty teenager coming to terms with her sexuality; secondly, Howard/Madeline as an overly-committed theatre actress suffering from psychosis who is desperately clinging to her thoughts and emotions; and thirdly, Madeline the artist who tries to free herself from the artifice and pretensions of cinema and theatre. Now, go get yourself a pint.
Verdict: Call this singular film experimental, impressionistic, or meta, and they still won't even begin to capture this highly-sensorial and madly-elliptical work about the psychosis of teenage angst and sexuality, and their radical encounter with performative art.
GRADE: B+
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