“Duck Butter”– Movie Review

This week at The Tribeca Film Festival, I attended the World Premiere of the new comedy, “Duck Butter”, starring Alia Shawkat.

Synopsis

When two women become disappointed in relationships, they decide to spend 24 hours together in order to restore their faith.

Story

Naima (Shawkat) is an aspiring actress who has become disenchanted with relationships due to the dishonesty she has experienced.  She has suffered as many professional disappointments as personal ones.  One night, she goes to a nightclub to let off some steam.  While there, she meets Sergio (Laia Costa), an aspiring singer/songwriter, who is also performing at the club.  Afterwards, they chat and find that they are really hitting it off.  In fact, they discover that they have both shared similar disappointments in their respective relationships. 

Later, they go back to Sergio’s place for a hook-up.  Afterwards, they concoct a plan that they believe will solve their problems:  to spend 24 consecutive hours with each other, having sex every hour, where they will be forced to confront each other in an open and hones way while sharing both emotional and physical intimacy.  In so doing, they believe, this will restore their faith in their ability to have an actual relationship with someone – possibly even each other.  Initially, things go well, but after hours without sleep, both become irritable and disagreeable. 

They return to Naima’s the next morning to continue their plan.  Living together is not as comfortable as they had both hoped it would be.  Sergio’s mother is supposed to meet her for breakfast, so they invite her over to Naima’s home, where she prepares a meal.  Things don’t improve much once she arrives; her presence only adds to the conflict and anxiety between the two.  After she leaves, Naima and Sergio must confront the reality with which they are faced:  has their experiment actually blown up in their face or can they overcome their difficulties to be a couple?

Review

If you already know the meaning of the term “Duck Butter” – or have had the opportunity to research what it references – then you probably have a reasonable idea of just how disgusting this movie has the potential of being.  Assuming you are entertained by the output of a rectum, then it’s possible that you may find the film “Duck Butter” to be a joyful cinematic experience.  However, if this does not sound like the foundation of solid filmmaking, then perhaps it might be time to look elsewhere.  As a fan of much of Alia Shawkat’s other work, this comes as a major disappointment. 

While watching “Duck Butter”, one gets the sense that it is utterly disjointed and nonsensical in its concept.  There’s a good reason for this:  as it turns out (based on the post-screening interview with the director and its stars), there was no screenplay.  At least not in the traditional sense.  Apparently, here’s what happened:  director Miguel Arteta received an outline from Shawkat; this was written at a very high level, one would think because Shawkat lacked the discipline to do the heavy lifting of writing an actual script.  She admitted during the interview that no dialog was written. 

The concept of the story is that these two women spend 24 hours together where they are having sex with each other every hour.  What we learned from the post-screening interview with Arteta is that in order to create the authenticity of a couple being awake for 24 hours straight, he chose to shoot the sequence in real time, during a 24 hour period where no one had a chance to sleep.  It shows.  What comes across is some kind of manic dream where people are unable to think clearly and are operating on sheer emotion.  Unfortunately, this results in unsympathetic characters and you really can’t root for either of them.