Madeline’s Made­line – first look review

On the sound­track, echoes, shuf­fles, a buzzing hum like an insect trap lamp. In the image, incred­i­bly shal­low focus, bleary dig­i­tal trails. Emerg­ing from the haze, a teenage girl screech­es, imag­in­ing her­self as a cat, and then a sea tur­tle. Wel­come to the world of New York high school per­form­ing arts stu­dent Made­line, who’s craft­ing an alter ego called Zia to chan­nel her emo­tions. Then again, ​“this is just a metaphor. These are not your emotions.”

Direc­tor Josephine Deck­er, along with some key col­lab­o­ra­tors like cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ash­ley Con­nor, has been devel­op­ing her par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­so­nant, emo­tion­al­ly brac­ing style through years’ worth of shorts and two pre­vi­ous fea­tures, But­ter on the Latch and Thou Wast Mild and Love­ly. It’s so uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly dis­tinct that many view­ers may find it grat­ing – espe­cial­ly when the pig masks come out – but it’s also a com­mand­ing and unmis­tak­able per­son­al vision.

Madeline’s Made­line is Decker’s best yet, more epic, more cohe­sive, more acid­ly wit­ty and with the most psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly sym­pa­thet­ic and sat­is­fy­ing sto­ry. Hele­na Howard, a teenag­er in her first film role who already seems like a ful­ly formed star, plays Made­line, a kid who has ​“episodes” and is on some kind of med­ica­tion. At times she wails and lash­es out in line with bipo­lar or bor­der­line dis­or­ders, at times she seems chill, thought­ful and lucid. Her over­pro­tec­tive moth­er, played by Miran­da July, fuss­es over and trig­gers her, while her teacher, played by Mol­ly Park­er, encour­ages Madeline’s ener­gy, know­ing it’s the dri­ving force giv­ing life to her performances.

Is Made­line real­ly men­tal­ly ill, or do her moods just rep­re­sent the ugly side of going as far as you need to go to achieve self-expres­sion? Most of us have crazed rages as teenagers, and chil­dren are born per­form­ers who make daft and eccen­tric nois­es; where do those impuls­es go if they’re not exam­ined, chan­nelled, trans­mo­gri­fied into cre­ativ­i­ty? The film ques­tions the very idea of men­tal ill­ness and makes it more about the emo­tion­al spectrum.

The project came about from a real per­for­mance piece Howard was doing about her fam­i­ly life; with Deck­er, she work­shopped it and turned it into this movie, which in turn is an act of self-crit­i­cism by the direc­tor, fol­low­ing the sur­ro­gate moth­er rela­tion­ship of Parker’s char­ac­ter and inves­ti­gat­ing the slip­per­i­ness and ego involved in those dynamics.

If Howard’s is the psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly explo­sive star turn, July is equal­ly impres­sive in a sub­tle, wor­ried, age­ing role, as is Park­er as a cre­ative whose masks, lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive, find them­selves slip­ping. By the end, when the emo­tions burst into an assaultive chant­i­ng and danc­ing num­ber recall­ing alter­na­tive musi­cal mas­ter­pieces like All That Jazz and Dancer in the Dark, we’ve seen an amaz­ing jour­ney of the haz­ards nav­i­gat­ed by the id as it strug­gles to be unre­strained and an hon­est, intense­ly spe­cif­ic por­tray­al of youth.