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![](\"https:\/\/cdn.craft.cloud\/26ed9c78-feb7-4ee6-8ddf-262fd7bafb2d\/assets\/tco\/images\/Maddies-Secret.jpg\")
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A film about a\u00a0bulimic with the surname \u200b\u201c<\/span>Ralph,\u201d starring cis male writer-director John Early as the cis female title character, seems at the outset to be going for the cheap laugh, but\u00a0<\/span>Maddie\u2019s Secret\u00a0<\/i>is, at heart, a\u00a0film about taking things seriously when the reflex is to snicker \u2013 things like chronic illnesses, like eating disorders, which are primarily associated with women, or like the conventions of the female-skewing genres the film imitates, with its movie-of-the-week histrionics and melodramatic sheen.<\/span><\/p>\n Early plays Maddie, a\u00a0recipe developer and web-video chef at a\u00a0<\/span>B\u00f6n App\u00e9tit\u00a0<\/i>Test Kitchen\u2009\u2013\u2009like Cond\u00e9 Nast property with the copyright-evading name \u200b\u201c<\/span>Gourmaybe\u201d with a\u00a0very femme wholesome ditziness, but there\u2019s no winking to the performance or to how she\u2019s treated by the script or other characters. This is a\u00a0film about dysmorphia, not dysphoria, but the air-quotes aspect of the performance is apt for a\u00a0film concerned with Maddie\u2019s rise as an influencer-content creator in a\u00a0Los Angeles of designer workwear, therapy apps, and buzzy hipster comfort-food restaurants like a\u00a0pizza place called Naughty Pie Nature, a\u00a0place where everyone is a \u200b\u201c<\/span>storyteller.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Maddie starts out as a\u00a0dishwasher under a\u00a0Shitty Media Man boss played by Conner O\u2019Malley, whose eruptions of unfiltered rage and vulgarity (\u201cWe\u2019ve got content to make!\u201d) are their own kind of gendered performance. She works her way up to on-camera talent when her supportive hubby (Eric Rahill) films a\u00a0viral video of her cooking and then enjoying an eggplant smashburger, both indulgent and healthy, elevated and casual, in keeping with what another character clocks as Maddie\u2019s \u200b\u201c<\/span>no-makeup makeup look.\u201d Maddie is a\u00a0vegetarian, for \u200b\u201c<\/span>ethical reasons\u201d which are obviously cover for a\u00a0tense equilibrium with extreme elimination diets, and her history of purging makes its heavily foreshadowed return soon after one too many comments about her refreshingly \u200b\u201c<\/span>healthy\u201d and \u200b\u201c<\/span>normal\u201d body, and under pressure to embody her own lifestyle brand for the producers of a\u00a0hot restaurant show called\u00a0<\/span>The Boar<\/i>, which is scouting her for a\u00a0consulting role. (Harris Meyersohn, a\u00a0producer here and, like O\u2019Malley, Rahill, and editor Danny Scharar, one of the geniuses behind\u00a0<\/span>Rap World<\/i>, practically sweats Erewhon as one of\u00a0<\/span>The Boar<\/i>\u200b\u2019<\/span>s showrunners.)<\/span><\/p>\n Maddie is both wholesome and controlled\u2009\u2014\u2009one of her recipes might involve a\u00a0purple potato, sliced so thin on the mandolin that the sunlight shines through it, casting a\u00a0stained-glass light on her face. This is a\u00a0Douglas Sirk effect, the stylization pushed to such an extreme of expressiveness that it\u2019s too heightened to as anything but sarcastic, but also too passionate to take as anything but serious, and Early is one contemporary filmmaker \u2013 Todd Haynes is another \u2013 who sees the exquisite, manicured melodramas of Golden Age Hollywood as a\u00a0useful template for the era of social media, in which every gesture is also a\u00a0performance. The cast of\u00a0<\/span>Maddie\u2019s Secret<\/i> \u2013 particularly tomboyish Kate Berlant, as Maddie\u2019s spiky and besotted sapphic sidekick \u2013 put an overenunciated gloss on every scene; Early and director of photography Max Lakner work in a\u00a0deliberately overwrought visual language: a\u00a0fast dolly-in for a\u00a0dramatic line reading, a\u00a0larger-than-life close-up of a\u00a0food-smeared mouth or bloodshot eyes to signify Maddie\u2019s secret shame. That Maddie is a\u00a0domestic-goddess entrepreneur is also a\u00a0throwback to the classic women\u2019s picture \u2013 Claudette Colbert was a\u00a0single mother turned pancake-mix magnate in the original\u00a0<\/span>Imitation of Life<\/i>, and Mildred Pierce was a\u00a0baker who became a\u00a0restaurateur, the kitchen being a\u00a0place where a\u00a0woman could transcend traditional gender constraints by embodying them to the\u00a0hilt.<\/span><\/p>\n Early pulls off his trickiest tonal balancing act when Maddie checks into an inpatient clinic full of adult women stuck in a\u00a0permanent adolescence, particularly a\u00a0characteristically avid Vanessa Bayer as Maddie\u2019s roommate, with a\u00a0teenybopper\u2019s wall of pink posters and an obsessive crush on the prissy male nurse. There\u2019s a\u00a0deep well of suffering here, evident in the submission to a\u00a0regimen of daily weigh-ins and the tentative gestures of solidarity, that isn\u2019t compromised by the absurdist gags and knowing genre beats. For the most part, that is: Early is sincere enough that he eventually reverts to bald therapeutic language in search of catharsis; in another echo of mid-century Hollywood, it\u2019s straightforwardly Freudian, coming back to Maddie\u2019s mother (Kristen Johnston, in 80<\/span>s-retro Madonna bangles that betray her mental age). This is disappointingly rote for a\u00a0film that had courted such hoary conventions without either aping or parodying them, but maybe even that is sort of the point. After all, how many genuinely struggling people have second-guessed their own pain by saying something like, \u200b\u201c<\/span>God, I\u2019m such a\u00a0clich\u00e9\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\nGet more Little White\u00a0Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n