Director: John Early
Writer: John Early
Stars: John Early, Kate Berlant, Kristen Johnson
Synopsis: A food influencer secretly struggles with bulimia as she navigates online fame, close friendships, and a painful past.
Melodrama is a time honored genre because the heightened emotions and slightly farfetched storylines make for a compelling reality. We’re drawn into a world where people have the perfect speech or the most effective way to end an argument. It’s as intoxicating, but less cringe inducing as people on reality TV. You just can’t look away. It’s a genre that’s ripe for parody because it is so over the top. What writer and director John Early does with Maddie’s Secret, is not strictly parody or strictly camp, but is such a grand pastiche of the melodrama that it heightens and surpasses the form.
There are two ways a film with its lead character in drag can go. It can be broad in making every other character notice, comment, and essentially make fun of the character with us. It can also be subtle, which is what John Early does as writer, director, and lead actor of Maddie’s Secret. He’s so easily able to make us forget the truth behind his performance by finding the deepest parts of this story. While it is ostensibly a comedy and it does have very funny moments as well as some over the top types of camp, the film is played straight. Every character, story beat, and emotional crescendo is meant to have a melodramatic realness to them that rings absolutely true.
It may be because this film isn’t about talking down to us. It’s about showing us a real person going through something very dramatic. That is the singular talent of Early. As a writer he has developed dialogue and action that could come out of any melodrama. As a director, his interpretations of the words are to simultaneously create a moody, obviously tongue in cheek style that never shies away from the darkness of the reality underneath. As a performer, he makes us understand Maddie on a much deeper level and a much more human level than what this material calls for on paper. To mix all of this together is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
There’s a scene as Maddie’s mind is taken over by her neurosis and she feels the urge to binge. As she opens the fridge door, she’s bathed in the glow. There are sudden jump cuts to close ups of Maddie’s mouth, her eyes, her face, and then a scurry away as she hears her husband Jake (Eric Rahill) moving around the apartment. As she stands in a static shot with her back to the wall, not seeing that Jake has headphones on and can’t hear her stomach digesting loudly, we experience a moment of heartbreak as we know what she’s about to do next. It’s at the same time funny, heartbreaking and very dramatic.
Early in concert with cinematographer Max Lakner and editor Danny Scharar have created a beautiful look to the film. It doesn’t have that sheen that a classic melodrama would, but it has the harsh crispness of digital photography. This lends itself to the idea that while the story and the characters are melodramatic and the lighting will shift for the particular mood, this is a story that has a grittiness to it. It’s a story that’s grounded in spite of its lofty genre trappings. It’s so grounded that at the most humanistic parts, you may just shed a few tears for the emotions feel more real than the heightened ones that get you to respond to a Douglas Sirk film.
All of this wouldn’t work however if the cast didn’t fully commit to the material as it is presented. Early is fabulous and his terrific collaborator Kate Berlant is great as Deena. Yet, in one of the best performances of one of the worst moms, Kristen Johnson really nails it. As Beverlee, Johnson has about ten minutes of screen time, but after that first phone conversation between Maddie and Beverlee, you feel her looming and judging in every scene of the film. Johnson’s big scene in the joint therapy session is tremendous. She cuts such an imposing figure and commands our attention with a smug and funny vileness that digs deeply under your skin. She’s always been good, but given great material, she can be utter dynamite.
Maddie’s Secret never lets us laugh at Maddie. We laugh at a situation she finds herself in, the wacky characters she interacts with, but never her and never what she’s going through. It just works on every level even though our logical brains may want it to be one or the other, we are somehow able to see these genres in harmonious synchronicity. Maddie’s Secret is a wonder of a film that is wholly unique in its execution.
