Madeline's Madeline

2018 fragmented drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A troubled girl deals with her mother and a mother-figure who runs an experimental theater group.

"You are not the cat. You are inside the cat." An actress playing a nurse says that to either the audience or a character who is off-screen. And so opens this fractured drama about mental illness, abusive mothers, oppressive theater directors, and art like an unruly peeping pickpocket. Honestly, I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be paying that much attention to role of art in the artist's life and vice versa, the meta-commentary not really apparent to me for a while. I almost feel like seeing this again with that in mind because I'm only able to skim the surface right now.

As an English major, you'd think I'd be good at understanding metaphors. This movie jumps out of the gate practically announcing that it's a metaphor, and the idea of metaphors is a recurring element. Unfortunately, I don't have a firm grasp on what the metaphor is. I need to read the Cliffs Notes version of this or something.

It's entirely possible that Madeline's Madeline is not a good movie, but one thing is obvious: Helena Howard, who plays Madeline's Madeline's Madeline, gives one of the best performances of the year. She is mesmerizing, and it's almost impossible to believe that this is her first movie gig. She shines as a kitten and less so as a tortoise, and there's a monologue she delivers in this that stunned me. The other actors responded in a similarly stunned way, probably because that's what the script demanded from them, but I'm going to imagine that acting stunned was easy for them because what Howard did there was stunning.

Miranda July is also really good as the mother, alternating between insanely mousy and insanely domineering. And Molly Parker completes the trio of females at the center of this as the theater director. Performances that manage to stick out in something this visually and aurally bold must be really impressive. Director Josephine Decker delivers all these odd camera angles, out-of-focus shots of insignificant chins, and surreal sequences that duplicate the fragmented mind of our protagonist, Madeline's Madeline's Madeline. It's effective, but it arguably makes this a difficult viewing experience.

As I wrote, I'm not sure if this all works or not. I need time and another viewing or three. One character talks about a pendulum swinging from sense to nonsense at some point in this. At times, it feels like this is a lot of experimental nonsense. But this is definitely an intriguing and unique movie, and the world sure could use more of those.