When you have an artist like Miranda July co-signing and excited for an up-and-coming filmmaker’s next effort, perhaps that’s ample reason to sit up and take notice if you haven’t already. And you absolutely should. Performance artist, actor, and filmmaker Josephine Decker took the indie world by storm in 2014 with her startling one-two punch of “Thou Wast Mild And Lovely” and “Butter On The Latch.” Even before they premiered, the movies were the talk of the indie space after both pictures were accepted into the Berlin Film Festival that year, which raised Decker’s profile exponentially. Well, turns out she’s a pretty remarkable filmmaker even if there’s not a lot of consensus around her movies — they seem to fall in love/hate camps, though the New Yorker’s Richard Brody placed one of her dramas in his top 10 of the year. ‘Lovely’ was a strange but enthralling indie drama turned horror and ‘Latch’ was a much more surreal and experimental effort. Regardless of your feelings on either — and mine were mixed — it’s undeniable that Decker is a talented and essential indie filmmaker to keep tabs on. This is all to say that Decker is back, this time with a co-director, for the docu-art hybrid, “Flames.”
READ MORE: The 10 Movies That Changed My Life: ‘Thou Wast Mild & Lovely’ Filmmaker Josephine Decker
Co-helmed with ex-boyfriend Zefrey Throwell, “Flames” was shot over five years focusing on the filmmakers’ relationship, from the passionate white hot days of lust and love all the way through tedium, heartbreak and more. The throw of a dart finds them on a spontaneous trip to the Maldives and cracks open the question: is their love true or just a performance? The film is making its U.S. premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here’s the long-form synopsis that suggests perhaps documenting every second of your relationship is not the healthiest decision ever made.
Filmed over five years, over five years, FLAMES follows real-life couple Josephine Decker (BUTTER ON THE LATCH, THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY) and Zefrey Throwell from the white-hot passion of first love to the heartbreak of the bitter end. High on their intense connection, the pair of artists document their relationship’s every beat, from their adventurous sex life, to their performance art collaborations, to a spur-of-the-moment getaway to the Maldives. But when the romantic vacation doesn’t exactly go as planned, the now-former couple are left to decide what to do with their film-in-progress, and for these two filmmakers, the end of the relationship isn’t the end of the story.
As they continue filming, reconstructing what happened and where it all went wrong, lines begin to blur between what was real and what was “the film” — if there’s even a difference anymore. Equal parts performance piece and penetrating rumination on the way some relationships are never finished even after they end, FLAMES is an extraordinary docu-art hybrid — a raw nerve of a film that finds within its unique idiosyncrasies and eccentricities a universally affecting manifesto of heartbreak.
Two trailers have been released for the indie, a NSFW version with copious amounts of nudity and sex and the tamer, green-band iteration. Either way, “Flames” will certainly garner a lot of attention at the upcoming Tribeca Film Fest, so it’s a potential breakout film to keep an eye on. [via IndieWire]
