Friday, December 2, 2011
Sean Durkin’s glacially paced thriller "Martha Marcy May Marlene" has a lot in common with the murderous cult its heroine eludes in the admittedly gripping opening sequence. First it lures you in with the promise of first-rate performances from John Hawkes and rising star Elizabeth Olsen and the kind of identity-fractured psychodrama well loved by fans of Roman Polanski’s "Repulsion" or David Lynch’s seminal "Mulholland Drive." Then it abruptly descends into a listless, rambling mess; leaving the viewer stranded in a two-hour stupor where the only terror is tedium.
It’s a shame the film is so enamored with its own distracting narrative gimcracks, because the basic premise is pure gold and the leads are each perfectly suited to their parts. Olsen impresses in her breakout role as Martha, who takes shelter at her sister’s lake house after escaping the clutches of Patrick (Hawkes) and his cabal of hive-minded, home invasion-loving followers. Hawkes’ wild-eyed, silver-tongued gloss on Charlie Manson is a commanding presence, one that truthfully belongs in a much better film. Martha’s time as one of Patrick’s brainwashed courtesans, explored in a series of dream-like flashbacks, infuses the film with a sense of mounting dread and trauma-stained melancholy.
Unfortunately Durkin’s haphazard screenplay makes the fatal mistake of grounding itself too often in the non-linear present, where Martha’s sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) struggles to make sense of what happened to her younger sibling. Paulson is a capable enough actress, but Lucy is too staid and frigid to act as the film’s heart, leaving long stretches where the only action is a dead-eyed Martha lounging on the couch or skinny-dipping in the lake, much to the delight of Lucy’s high-strung husband Ted (a grossly miscast Hugh Dancy). I only wish the filmmakers had taken more time to appreciate Olsen’s less obvious assets.
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