Absolutely loved this. So incredibly realistic and beautifully shot and told. At first I wasn't sure about the ending, but after some thinking I've come to the conclusion that it was a good choice of the writers to make. In order to not get too freaked out about the characters here, especially the one played by Laia Costa, you'll have to know exactly how crazy they are beforehand. One could argue whether or not Laia's character suffer from a personality disorder, and I definitely think so, but that's what makes this stand out so much from other movies in general. It reminds me a little about "Silver Linings Playbook" I suppose, and if you liked that movie you'll probably like this one as well.

10/10!

I get that some people love the more fluid, unscripted type of movie-"so RAW! So real!"-but I personally find that it's really really easy to do this kind of movie badly. And bad this was: in 24 hours of the characters being together, multiple film cliches came out of the woodwork regarding women-to-women relationships, including some obsessive/intense behaviors that just felt out of place. I didn't find this movie to be as realistic as some think it is, and some scenes were just straight up tasteless and vulgar. I get that we should be impressed that all the usual relationship drama can come out in a short period of time if you spend a lot of time together (apparently this is innovative for a plot device?),but I'm just not impressed.

Call me old-fashioned, but I wanted a decent script and a more compelling story.... and some more inspired acting would have been nice. Both characters needed better development.

Finally, I can't unlearn the definition of "duck butter" after seeing this travesty of a movie, so there's that, too. Just...no.

Duck Butter intrigued me because it delved into LGBT romance and starred an actress I greatly admire, Laia Costa (I've watched her in both English and Spanish movies and she's always great). The concept is simple: Naima (played by Alia Shawkat, an actress I was unfamiliar with before this role) and Sergio (Costa) decide on a whim to spend 24 hours straight with each other soon after they meet and become intimate based on initial attraction. Sex, intimate conversations, and shenanigans ensue.

My biggest problem with Duck Butter is that it features two of the most immature, emotionally-stunted characters I've ever seen in a movie like this. The movie doesn't fully explore why these two women are so outlandishly emotionally stupid save for some scant background details about poor parental relationships, nor does it offer any solution by way of character growth or learning from past mistakes, save for one consequence Naima suffers in her career for acting unprofessional (the email scene and its conclusion). Naima is immediately unlikable; she is introduced first, immediately acts pretentious at her job, then preaches about politics to some clearly unimpressed ladies at a gay bar a scene or two later. While her character does become a little more tolerable as the movie progresses, by contrast Sergio starts out charming and energetic and devolves into an even bigger mess by the movie's conclusion. At their worst, Naima is groan-worthy and Sergio teeters on the edge of psychotic; at their best, these characters are groaning their way through some entry-level sex scenes in which we feel nothing, for the mutual attraction between them is never explained, felt, or fully understood.

That's not to say these actresses did a bad job; both Costa and Shawkat do the best with the material they're given, but their characters are simply so unlikable and dull that the performances aren't particularly memorable. This is coming from someone who has seen Costa's other angst-filled, young love drama Newness, which is a movie whose characters are at times immature, but at least that film had something to say. Duck Butter dwells in the infantilism of its leads without coming to any conclusions or even appropriately exploring the nuances of such disturbed characters to make them interesting enough for the screen.

As a last note, much has been said about the movie's odd obsession with scatological references and attempts at humor. I'm someone who can appreciate good juvenile humor, but the references here just seemed odd and out of place. Overall, the only good thing I took out of Duck Butter is that while I still like Laia Costa, I'll also keep on the lookout for Alia Shawkat. She's uniquely beautiful and did her best with the material here, and I hope to see her in new (and better) films.