News Summary

• John Early's first feature-length movie, Maddie’s Secret, stars Emily Allan, Leah Hennessey, and Ruby McCollister.
• Early plays dishonesty magnificently, although he has typically focused on the dishonest and venomous.
• At the plot level the film follows its source material, the 1986 bulimia melodrama Kate's SecretQuite faithfully, and its stagey quality is recognizable to anyone familiar with Seventies- and Eighties-era after-school specials.
• But Early seems to be making a very personal film with a lovely, distinctly Sirk-inflected aesthetic that is nevertheless somewhat at odds with the story being told.