Previously at the ICA - Films

Josephine Decker, Butter on the Latch, 2013

ICO Two films by Josephine Decker Season: Mistress America + Butter on the Latch with an intro/performance on female friendship

20 Aug 2015

This double-bill screening will feature an introduction on female friendship with a performative reading.

Programme schedule:
Introduction/performance followed by Mistress America - Starts 6.40pm
15 min interval
Butter on the Latch

With Mistress America Noah Baumbach delivers another wry comedy of manners, this time co-written with his star Greta Gerwig. She plays Brooke, the mile-a-minute new best friend of Tracy, a smart but slightly disappointed new girl in town whose mum is engaged to Brooke’s dad.

Bowled over by her soon-to-be stepsister’s manic but (thanks to Gerwig’s acting chops) oddly endearing personality, Tracy soon finds herself embroiled in romantic intrigues and probably ill-advised business plans. Baumbach’s intuitive feel for ironic humour and material that would make lesser artists blanch is as evident here as it was in Greenberg and The Squid And The Whale. The script wastes not a syllable, and the pace never lets up.

MISTRESS AMERICA: Official HD Trailer

Mistress America, dir. Noah Baumbach, USA, 2015, 84 mins

Butter on the Latch is the tale of an entangled female friendship, set in a real-life Balkan music camp in upstate New York, told with avant-garde flourishes and disturbing psycho-sexual undercurrents.

Sarah and Isolde are former friends who meet by chance at a music festival. In this mystical setting they embrace the lush natural surroundings, captured with a rare sensuous eye by Decker. The two build a close bond in this female utopia until tensions are strained when Steph, a male camper, arrives. As the friendship collapses, the film becomes a phantasmagoria that recalls the work of David Lynch.

Two Films by Josephine Decker - UK tour - Butter on the Latch & Thou Wast Mild and Lovely

Josephine Decker, Butter on the Latch, USA, 2013, 72 mins

When

E.g., 30-07-2021
E.g., 30-07-2021