THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY *

Hand-held cameras, dialogue that sounds, on the one hand as if being improvised and on the other as if it's just bad writing and acting that doesn't look like 'acting'; these are the trademarks of the cinema of Josephine Decker, apparently one of the primary exponents of what has come to be known as 'mumblecore'. Decker is obviously a filmmaker who knows what a film should 'look' like and "Thou Wast Mild and Lovely" certainly looks terrific but typical of Decker it's got characters you might want to cross the street to avoid let alone spend time with in a cinema. In other words, she makes movies that are so personal, watching them feels like an intrusion.

This one is set on a farm inhabited only by a gruff farmer and his daughter in what looks very like an incestuous relationship, that is interrupted by a mostly silent young farmhand who comes to work for the summer. In a conventional movie, you might get some palpable tension out of these relationships but Decker doesn't do conventional. There is certainly a good deal of unconventional eroticism on display but no real drama, even if it does end badly. The mediocre performances don't help, giving the feeling of a very well made home-movie, a kind of porn movie made by an intellectual with no interest in porn and the end result is like a cross between "God's Little Acre" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Worth seeing, then, but I'm not sure if I would ever want to see it again.