Madeline's Madeline

Defined by Richard Brody (The New Yorker) as a visionary drama, this film by Josephine Decker focuses on the character of Madeline (Helena Howard, in an explosive performance), an adolescent with psychological problems whose conflicts with her mother (Miranda July) are echoed in the difficult relationship with Evangeline (Molly Parker), the director of the theatre workshop she attends and whose most recent project takes on a life of its own when its young star takes the acting too seriously. To quote Brody, the result is “an epic’s worth of expressive detail, imaginative incident, emotional variety and intensity, and aesthetic invention”.