Madeline's Madeline

I think part of my problem with this was that however experimental the whole concept, or concept within that concept, was meant to be - I just didn't care one way or the other about the eponymous lass (Helena Howard). It didn't start so well with "you are not a cat, you are inside a cat" - not an image I wished to conjure up on any level! Anyway, she is a wanna-be actress who is quite prepared to put in the graft to succeed, and that's no easy task when surrounded by a combination of attitudes and ambitions that are as likely hostile to her success as not. To be fair to Howard, there is…

I watched _Madeline's Madeline_, mainly because I liked Josephine Decker's later film _Shirley_. This one's trying to do a lot—race, mental health, coming of age, mother-daughter tensions, plus a whole meta-theatre layer—whilst bold, it often felt like it was trying too hard to be important. That said, Helena Howard is phenomenal. It's a breakout performance full of rawness and intensity; she holds the whole chaotic thing together. Miranda July felt oddly constrained by the direction, somewhat hemmed in a film that encourages improvisation and emotional looseness, which is her bread and…