Saw Madeline's Madeleine (thanks, Nina!) It was a moving, self-referential film about a girl (Madeleine) who loves dancing and who is struggling with growing up, with her mother, and with mental problems of some kind ("did you take your meds?" asks the mother.) On top of all of this, she's forming a pseudo-mother bond with her dance teacher who is clearly semi-exploiting this girl's trauma for some fresh, spicy theater inspiration.
The film is very good. I cared deeply about Madeleine and her troubled relationship with her mother. Her mother is played by Miranda July who plays the role with the daffiness of the mom from Bob's Burgers, but with none of the humor. She's a flighty, hysterical scold who is just frightened for her troubled daughter and slightly frightened of her as well. The dance instructor exploits Madeleines openness and trust of her to find out about this raw emotional turmoil and wants to just straight-up plop it on stage, emotional fall-out be damned. Most of the time, the film flirts with this disaster, but there's times in the film (when the daughter eats over at her dance instructor's house) where the film veers into full-on emotional horror show.
To complicate this film yet more, the woman who plays the dance instructor is the director of the film and Madeleine really is as young as she looks. Is this director exploiting this girl? Like the dance instructor's dances, this film was made in a "semi-improvisational, collaborative" manner. How close does this film hew to reality? The self-reference creates an interesting, dark sort of puzzle. Is this girl acting? Does she know it?
An interesting, fraught little film.
No comments:
Post a Comment