MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Josephine Decker
Much of the occurrences in Butter on the Latch , the debut feature from actress/performance artist Josephine Decker, are of the highly-ambiguous variety as the film refuses to follow any discernible path narratively speaking. Think more along the lines of a free-form improvisation told in scattershot chronology, wafting between reality, daydreams and nightmares. As one can imagine, some of it works while some of it falls a bit flat.
The viewer is unwittingly thrown in the deep end of Decker’s debut, where she continuously blurs the line between reality and fantasy. Sarah, the lead character portrayed by Sarah Small, receives a distressing call while walking through the city. Panicked and perturbed, the viewer is only able to glean limited information as to what is transpiring; enough information, however, to recognize that the next sequence involves Sarah waking up in the same situation she was handling earlier via phone call.
Sarah opts to rendezvous, fragile mind-state in tow, with her close friend Isolde (Isolde Chae-Lawrence) at a Balkan folk song and dance camp deep in the woods of Mendocino, California. They quickly catch up and reminisce through improvised dialogue a la Swanberg with days spent attending various song and dance sessions, nights spent drinking and dancing. Sarah recounts a Balkan folk tale about a dragon that entangles itself in the hair of unsuspecting women, carrying them deep into the forest.
Soon after this folk tale reunion Sarah develops an infatuation with a fellow camp attendee, Steph (Charlie Hewson), and the pal-around time with Isolde is quickly replaced with the blossoming romance with Steph. Emotional shifts abound as Sarah and Isolde’s relationship becomes strained, almost instantaneously. Sarah’s reality is increasingly infiltrated with nightmares and hallucinatory visions set against the backdrop of a verdant wilderness of sinister serenity.
These hallucinations are definitely the high point of Butter on the Latch, unfortunately they are too few and too far between as much of the film spends its time aimlessly meandering about the forest, winedrunk stumbling deeper and deeper into pointlessness. While a majority of the film’s actions are filmed in varying degrees of unfocus by cinematographer Ashley Conner which works to stress Sarah’s blurred perception, yet has the unwanted side-effect of rendering much of the film into a series of redundant imagery consisting of out of focus faces, foliage and Balkan music sessions. Coupled with a quasi-existent narrative masquerading as ambiguity and Butter on the Latch is quite the slog despite its 72 minute run-time.
Decker’s debut feature is not entirely without merit as she proves herself quite skilled at creating an enigmatic narrative while burying it deep inside a foreboding atmosphere, thinly veiled with calm and serenity. Unfortunately, all of this work leads nowhere. Instead of a being struck by a mysterious experimental film full of emotional dissonance, all I was left with was a foggy recollection of seemingly inconsequential happenings.
BUTTER ON THE LATCH – Trailer from Cinelicious Pics on Vimeo.
