Barbican Cinema introduction:
Writer-director Josephine Decker (Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, Butter on the Latch) returns with this mysterious drama following lonely young girl Madeline (newcomer Helena Howard) as she participates in a theatre project. The work slowly begins to shift form as Madeline sinks deeper into her performance. Featuring a stand out performance from Howard and riveting support from Miranda July and Molly Parker, Decker’s latest is an emotionally bracing experiment - vivid, dream-like, unpredictable and utterly captivating. Following the screening, we’re delighted to have writer/director Josephine Decker join us in conversation with journalist Beth Webb. In association with Bechdel Test Fest, with special thanks to MUBI.
New Yorker review:
Family conflicts and artistic drives combust gloriously in Josephine Decker’s theatre-centered drama, starring Helena Howard as Madeline, a sixteen-year-old New York performance prodigy who is caught in an emotional tug-of-war between her mother, Regina (Miranda July), and Evangeline (Molly Parker), the director of an acting troupe that’s Madeline’s creative focus. Madeline has been hospitalized for mental illness; Regina, who is deeply devoted to her, nonetheless has a short fuse and a sarcastic manner, and the mother-daughter tensions rise to an edge of violence that Madeline integrates, brilliantly but terrifyingly, into her improvisations with the troupe. Decker pushes the action to the breaking point of fury, which the cast—and especially Howard, in one of the most accomplished teen performances ever—embodies with a flaying and self-scourging vulnerability. Ashley Connor’s turbulent, intimate cinematography matches the actors in physical commitment; the result is an ecstatic, anguished, fiercely empathetic masterwork.
Richard Brody
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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