Maddie’s Secret

In his feature directorial debut, Emmy-nominated writer-actor-comedian John Early uses high-concept comic conceits to uncover deep social and interpersonal insights. Early himself plays Maddie Ralph, a content creator at “Gourmaybe”—which is definitely not the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen—whose childhood struggle with bulimia resurfaces just as videos of her eggplant smashburgers start to rack up hits. On one level, Maddie’s Secret is like the ’80s and ’90s “movies of the week,” which despite their downmarket status and campy infelicities were among the only films of the era to take women’s issues such as eating disorders seriously. (The title is a nod to 1986’s Kate’s Secret, starring Meredith Baxter as a bulimic housewife.) But the gauzy colors, rapid dollies, and emphatic scoring also evoke the knowing, neoclassical women’s pictures of John Waters and Todd Haynes. Never winking from beneath his wig, Early gives us a Maddie inspired by the high-femme sincerity of Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls, and uses the heightened language of melodrama to evoke a manicured, image-conscious Los Angeles where everyone is a potential influencer. A supporting cast full of Early’s fellow alt-comedy icons, including Kate Berlant and Conner O’Malley, underlines the absurdity even as the raw psychodrama pushes toward aching catharsis. A Magnolia Pictures release.