Watching experimental theater on drugs is fun only for the those on drugs. For the normal core who watch with unclouded eyes a WTF masterpiece becomes just WTF.
Madeline’s Madeline is the cinema version of WTF. Add a heavy dose of meta referencing on madness versus reality, theater versus life, lots of fuzzy camera work, jumpy editing and blurring characters and a four letter profanity starting with S can be tacked on after all the WTF.
Experimental theater and cinema auteurs Miranda July and Molly Parker add an aura of nouveau pretentious seriousness to all the meta hijinks from director Josephine Decker. There confused looks half the time are just another layer of WTF, as the two gradually realize that they have signed up for something twice as stupid as they initially thought was smart.
The titular heroine, who may or may not be going mad, is played by newcomer Helena Howard. Don’t take her disaffected scowl for serious acting. Three quarters of runway models can produce and sustain the same look.
Madeline’s Madeline only seems like art to those critics who easily confuse artiness for the real thing.
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