So, I just watched this movie at the Literatur Festival in Berlin. Josephine Decker was there, to and she seems like a nice person so I am sorry I think her movie kind of (not totally) sucks. She calls herself a feminist and the movie was screened under a "About the status of feminism" focus at the festival so I guess I was expecting something different and smarter. In her defense: I couldn't stay for the discussion after the screening, I would have loved to ask some questions or tell her myself what I thought of the movie, so maybe I missed the big explanation why this film indeed could be read as feminist. The film should have a trigger warning, if not generally than maybe next time she presents the movie, she should at issue a trigger warning herself. The level of sexual and physical violence is over the top and not explained or necessary. I tend to like violent movies but I differ explained or somewhat logical violence in movies and exploitative violent movies, this one felt pretty exploitive. The sexual violence is pretty disgusting and shown in an affirmative way. Also, to be compared to David Lynch takes more than copying his sound-stage and usage of images.

Josephine Decker has created a new style of thriller that employs allegory, incorporates touches of David Lynch as well as Magritte -esque imagery. Decker's setting of a remote farm feels like a metaphor for what turns out to be hell. The raw and emotional (and yes, sometimes funny) dialog tells a story that can seem familiar at points but really is meant to keep you guessing and off balance.

I really enjoyed how the undertones of this film came to life through her very deft contrast of the innocent with the grotesque. Her use of camera angles and focus creates an interesting symbolic and literal dialog of it's own - and evoked unexpected emotions for this viewer. This is a captivating film.

So if you are up for a cinematic adventure (more like a roller coaster) like no other, that doesn't disappoint -- this is a film to see.

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.