Channeling improv into film

‘Madeline’s Madeline’ director relies on unique storytelling style

“Madeline’s Madeline” is a movie about many things. It is about a mother and a daughter. It is about mentorship. It is about the purpose of storytelling and art in peoples’ lives. It is a sprawling, dizzying, intense study of a young woman possibly in the throes of mental illness but definitely involved with an out-there experimental theater troupe.

The film, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and is currently playing in limited release, is the latest work from writer-director Josephine Decker, whose previous features, “Butter On the Latch” and “Thou Wast Mild and Lovely,” both premiered at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival.

Even within the adventurous world of independent filmmaking, Decker’s style is unique. “Madeline” sprang from a series of improvisational theater workshops that generated material that the director then shaped into a script.

In the film, a volatile young woman named Madeline (Helena Howard) is torn between her frightfully protective mother, Regina (Miranda July), and theater group director Evangeline (Molly Parker), whose nurturing interests may hide an undercurrent of vampiric manipulation.

“Madeline’s Madeline” is not a movie made for sound bites, and even Howard — who makes an explosive, riveting screen debut in the title role — has found her ideas of what the movie is about continue to evolve.

“I say it’s about where you draw the line between art and exploitation. And someone’s story between that,” she said recently during phone call from the New York City offices of the film’s distributor,