Butter on the Latch is the tale of an entangled female friendship, set in a real-life Balkan music camp in upstate New York, told with avant-garde flourishes and disturbing psycho-sexual undercurrents.
Sarah and Isolde are former friends who meet by chance at a music festival in the woods of Mendocino, California. Happy to be away from the urban life that has for too long defined them, in this mystical setting Sarah teaches Isolde old folk songs about myths, such as dragons that entwine themselves in women’s hair. From this point they begin to share their most intimate confidences with one another. The flow of their conversation in this female utopia is easy until Steph, a male camper, arrives. As Sarah’s attraction to him becomes apparent, her bond with Isolde unravels.
Decker eschews a conventional narrative and instead creates a phantasmagoria that moves from dreamlike fantasy to improvised vérité, helped in no small part by Ashley Connor’s cinematography. The resulting film boldly invites you to ‘feel’ your way through the drama and heralds a genuinely exciting new filmmaking talent.