"Comedian John Early's directorial debut Maddie's Secret is not a straightforward cautionary tale about bulimia. While it doesn't necessarily trivialize the eating disorder or its harmfulness, Early is less concerned with bulimia than in its historic depictions onscreen - chiefly in hokey, made-for-TV movies from the '90s, whose campiness, clunky dialogue, and melodrama he parodies. Maddie, played by Early without winking, has a disordered relationship with food that's all the more tortured because of her job."
"But soon the film reaches its first binge-eating scene, in which Maddie violently shoves fistfuls of food into her mouth in a dark kitchen. She forces it down by chugging milk so fast it streams down her chin. The scene is shot in extreme close-up, in borderline pornographic fashion, with sound design so vivid it would send a person with misophonia into an institution."
Maddie's Secret subverts conventional onscreen bulimia narratives by lampooning melodramatic, made-for-TV portrayals while treating the disorder with seriousness. The protagonist, Maddie, hosts and develops recipes for an online food brand called Gourmaybe, where aggressively styled food amplifies desire and fuels her pathology. Performance and camerawork render Maddie's relationship with food as lustful and destructive, from smeared frosting to an intense binge sequence filmed in extreme close-up. Sound design heightens visceral discomfort alongside comic camp, creating scenes that oscillate between parody and genuine emotional impact. The film uses food styling, framing, and editing to link digital food culture to personal disordered eating.
Read at Vulture
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