REVIEW | "Duck Butter" at Tribeca 2018
Redefining modern love, one hour at a time...
What could you spend twenty-four hours straight participating in, and is it enough to learn whether or not you love it?
Relationships are complicated, and as most young, single people know, they also eat up a lot of your time and don't tend to end well. There must be a way around this problem while still finding some sort of intimacy. In this new film from Director Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl and Beatriz at Dinner), two women explore their other options when they decide to enter into a pact. Twenty-four hours being together, including nothing but telling the truth and sex on the hour. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Well, you're not too far off, plot-wise. The execution, however, is quite brilliant.
Alia Shawket (Search Party) and Laia Costa (The Red Band Society) star as Naima and Sergio, who meet at a club and decide to give the experiment a try after discussing their frustrations with one another with love. The relationship is complicated when the women find themselves in the position of having to tell the truth to one another. Naima hides the fact she only agreed to the experiment because she was let go from a job and Sergio reveals little about her mother who comes to visit during the day and shows a clear disapproval of her daughter's decisions. Just like any romantic time together, things get complicated.
Arteta (who co-wrote the film with Shawket) made the decision to actually shoot the film over the course of twenty-four hours in order to have the same sort of high-pressure and exhausted environment be created for the actors to work and play within. Most of the crew stayed awake for this entire period of shooting. Not only does it add an element of authenticity that is palpable on the screen, it also helped to depict exactly what is at stake for these characters.
These women are not objects in someone else's story, but rather each pulling to be the lead within this situation. Maybe this involves Naima talking about how much she hates the way her parents talk about her or the trauma from her past involving a mean comment about her body that lends its name to the title of the film. Maybe it's when Sergio discusses using men for money to produce her album or admitting she does things like defecate and throw it at people when she's angry. The larger point is, the focus is on their development alone, not on how it relates to men or male power. There are not really any male characters prominently featured throughout the film as a whole.
It is also beautifully shot and edited. The rawness in the intercourse scenes the characters are frequently involved in range in emotion, from tender and sweet to forceful and urgent, as we see them go from exploring one another's bodies to clearly wanting to get the obligation over. This is likely due to the success of Arteta leaving the actresses to decide how to shoot these pieces and coming in only for the taping, not the planning.
But Arteta's role in general makes me question the praise this film has gotten for redefining queer relationship narratives on screen. While it is progressive in the way it features the women's relationship, it feels irksome to have a female-dominated narrative controlled through the lens of a male director. In many ways it becomes hard not to think about the whole thing as some sort of twisted male gaze. Yes, the women have control, but is this is not another way for men to enjoy them, too?
The obvious conclusion to the way this will end between the women is also upsetting. No one would go into this film assuming they will get together. No one will walk out surprised when they do not, but instead Naima is in the same bed she woke up in, once again alone, and no further along in her pursuit of whatever it is we are trying to find in our twenties. This leaves the question hanging of what the film is trying to get across beyond the obvious point that love remains a mysterious mess to many of us. While it gives a good try at queer visibility, that is not really enough when you consider the gender politics at play. It's a good movie, but I don't know if it's as complex as critics are trying to unravel it as being.
Overall, the film is a success based on the increased visibility it gives to queer relationships and the quality of the actresses combined with lovely cinematography, however I believe we must also ask ourselves whether or not involving a same-sex couple in what feels like a gimmick is true liberation or rather an act of fetishization continued. Would this story be just as enticing if the gender dynamics were switched, and how much power do our female leads really hold? It's a conversation that will inevitably continue well beyond this festival.
Running time: 93 min | Director: Miguel Arteta | Starring: Alia Shawkat, Laia Costa, Mae Whitman, and more!
Find out more about Duck Butterhere.
Rachel A.G. Gilman is a writer, a radio producer, and probably the girl wearing the Kinks shirt. Visit her website for more.
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