Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: A-

I am left a little bemused by Maddie’s Secret, an elaborate and sharply observed homage to 80s and 90s “movies of the week” set in the world of modern social media food content production—in which first-time feature writer and director John Early cast himself in the title role. As a straight, cisgender woman. In which he almost totally plays it straight.

In short: I don’t get it. Why was it necessary for him to cast himself in this part? It’s not like he’s channeling Divine—or even John Travolta—here; there is no camp to be found, although ironically I suspect John Waters would love this movie. Would it play differently had Early actually cast a woman in the part of Maddie? I can’t imagine the act of homage and the very subtle satire here would be particularly different in that case. So what was the point, then, aside from the fact that it gets more people talking about the movie?

And here’s the weirdest part. Early is good in this role. It actually doesn’t take very long to just accept him as this character, in spite of facial structure and detectable Adam’s apple, which are fairly obscured by the 38-year-old Early’s enviable softness of skin. When Early presents as himself, he presents as pretty culturally “male,” but he can shift into zones of androgyny with unparalleled ease. He speaks with a soft voice as Maddie, and surrounds himself with quite a number of women in supporting parts—even more than male parts. Every one of them seems to understand the assignment, even if I don’t.

The thing is, as good as Early is, I was still regularly thinking about the fact that this was a self-identified man playing the part of a woman. This could only take me out of the story at regular intervals, even though the superb production is just as committed to the loving homage of the TV movies of our childhood as, say, Far From Heaven was committed to the loving homage of Douglas Sirk films. The key difference is that it’s a bit easier to take the characters in Far From Heaven seriously, since it makes no anachronistic casting choices.

I keep thinking of Divine and John Travolta, who were cisgender men playing the part of cisgender women in John Waters films, and the presentation was similar in that they played it straight—but, those movies were far more heightened than this one, under the direction of a man who practically invented camp. John Early is working far more subtly, even if the final product is still heightened. Maddie works as a dishwasher where chefs record themselves cooking original recipes, and when she quickly becomes a viral star after posting some food content of her own, the suppressed eating disorder from her childhood begins to resurface.

Early is 12 years younger than I am, but I can remember the very movies he’s referencing here. I can remember watching TV movies about women with bulimia, and their exaggerated close-ups of them binge-eating before purging seared themselves into my memory. Seeing similar scenes in Maddie’s Secret (which are done shockingly few times, only once or twice) brought those memories right back, which I suspect was by design. There was a moment during this film that I thought: Is this movie going to take a turn? I thought, maybe it will suddenly get truly wild. It never quite does, though. Early has a stupendous hold on the fine line of tone that he was clearly going for here, and he consistently gives us just a taste of the melodrama without ever truly taking it over the top.

Does any of that qualify as something to recommend Maddie’s Secret, though? This is where I struggle. Were I to tell you that you should see this movie, I would struggle to tell you why—even though so much of it is so finely attuned, so competently put together. Is it funny, at least? Not really; that doesn’t seem to be what Early was going for, although there were a couple of moments that got me laughing pretty hard. They almost felt accidental, even though they were clearly very precisely constructed. I suppose, if pressed, I could say Maddie’s Secret is worth watching for the marvel of how Early basically disappears into a role that, by his own assertion, is not drag. Honestly it’s not campy enough to be drag. It has no connection to trans people, either, which puts this film into a deeply niche space that defies categorization.

Will I ever watch this again? I will forever be impressed by the perfectly imperfect flyaways of Early’s blonde wig, but nevertheless: not likely. Early has long been a peculiar performer for whom a choice like this weirdly makes sense, but I’m going to have to spend some more time pondering whether the final product makes much sense for the rest of us.