Butter on the Latch

I don't doubt for a minute that Josephine Decker has talent but having recently watched two of the films she's directed I'm not quite sure if her talent is for making movies. "Madeline's Madeline" was certainly impressive but it still wasn't an easy film to sit through. It was more like the recording of a 'performance' than a proper film while her feature debut, "Butter on the Latch" is nothing more than a series of rambling conversations filmed in a documentary style that might once have been called 'cinema-veritie'.

There is a kind of a plot; it's like a thriller but one so cerebral all the thrills have been removed and since she never holds her camera steady for very long the film induces a kind of vertigo. What she is good at is getting totally naturalistic performances from her actresses, (she works mostly with women), but, after a while, with no real storyline, just watching them 'act' becomes simply boring. I have a feeling she might have a career in avant-garde theatre but for now, I am not quite convinced she's cut out for the cinema.