Review: ‘Duck Butter’ and the 24-Hour ‘for Real’ Relationship

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/movies/duck-butter-review-alia-shawkat.html

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One of the quiet charms of “Duck Butter,” a sweetly funny, sometimes tough little movie about a woman on a journey into self, is how its modest scale works in its favor. Directed by Miguel Arteta, it mostly takes place over a single day and night, and not much happens by conventional movie standards. Two strangers hook up and, while giddily enjoying their postcoital high, decide to try to cram an entire relationship — a world of togetherness — into the next 24 hours. So they talk, eat, drink and talk some more, regularly taking time out to turn each other on.

Naima (Alia Shawkat) and Sergio (Laia Costa) have sex every which way, in bed and out, in clothes and out, swept away by desire. They also share other parts of themselves, willingly but also inadvertently — and not necessarily in sync. One cuts loose; the other raises an emotional barrier. Letting it all hang out proves easy for Sergio, a sublimely untalented singer whose free-spirited ways can feel calculated, as when she calms down (and delights) a hostile audience by kissing surprised female patrons. Given that Naima sleeps with her arms crossed and fists clenched, it seems as if she might be immune to Sergio’s charismatic offensive. Not a chance.

You might find yourself more resistant to Sergio’s enthusiasms despite Ms. Costa’s energetically earnest performance. Much depends on your tolerance for excitable personalities like Sergio who eagerly turn life into self-aggrandizing drama, as if living their personal truth entails punctuating every sigh and statement with exclamation points. “I want to know you, for real,” Sergio tells Naima while they’re cooking up their 24-hour pact. Someone less stoned on sex might have wondered what “for real” means, might have hit pause. But Naima is wowed and flattered and — as we gradually learn — she has a need that she can’t yet express, even to herself.

There’s always a danger when a movie effectively locks you up with two characters so that you experience their every hot breath in squirming, claustrophobic intimacy (like in “Bug” and “Room”). If you don’t fall in love with at least one of the two, your attention can spiral into impatience or stray into indifference. There’s little chance of that in “Duck Butter” because of Ms. Shawkat, an intensely appealing performer who’s a veteran of the TV series “Arrested Development.” In a show crowded with genius, Ms. Shawkat always manages to stand out, partly because you can always see her working the angles even when comically flailing. The same holds true here.

In “Duck Butter,” Ms. Shawkat — who wrote the screenplay with Mr. Arteta — creates a character whose consciousness lurches into existence one modest and momentous encounter at a time. Naima labors (struggles) as an actress, and the story clicks in on her first day on an indie production (alongside an amusing Kumail Nanjiani and Lindsay Burdge) being directed by Mark and Jay Duplass. Appearing as themselves, the Duplasses drop in only briefly, but they make a sly, barbed impression — and give the movie a sharp meta-moment — as professional nice guys whose chill vibe instantly evaporates when Naima, with a supreme lack of self-awareness, challenges their authority.

Much of “Duck Butter” takes place after Naima’s humiliating experience working with the Duplasses. She more or less runs straight into Sergio’s arms, which can be read as a metaphor for female self-reliance (with tinges of panic and fear) or appreciated as a bit of storytelling expediency. Ms. Shawkat, who also has an executive producer credit here, has appeared in her share of indie productions. She and Mr. Arteta, a sensitive observer of life’s everyday churn (his credits include “Beatriz at Dinner”), do some lovely work in a movie that reminds you that sometimes all you need in realist fiction is a glimpse into another person’s being — but with heart and intelligence, good craft and technique.