A young woman (Elizabeth Olsen, sister of Ashley and Mary Kate) awakes in a crowded room, filled with other women who are still asleep, and slowly makes her way out of the room before heading out the front door. Someone calls out her name but she ignores it as she hurries her way into the dense thicket of woods across from the small commune she has been living on for an undisclosed amount of time. She begins to run as shouts of "Marcy May!" and galloping footsteps grow closer, but she is ultimately safe, making her way to a diner. One of her pursuers finds her but lets her go (assumedly), allowing her to call her protective, privileged older sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson).
Thus begins Martha Marcy May Marlene, Sean Durkin's genuinely haunting debut feature, and the lack of exposition and uneasy, paranoid tone set by the film's overture remains palpable throughout. The young woman, who was born Martha, enters her sister's vacation home for an indeterminable amount of time, as well as her sister's marriage to Ted (Hugh Dancy), a wealthy man who, like Lucy, often has to commute from upstate New York to NYC. As tensions begin to emerge -- between Martha and Lucy, Lucy and Ted, Ted and Martha -- Durkin begins to seamlessly weave in memories of Martha's time at the small commune, where she was known as Marcy May and was under the psychological control of seductive cult leader Patrick (the great John Hawkes).
The scenes at the commune are integral to the scenes at the vacation home, as it presents an intriguing, wholly immersive dichotomy between two utterly disparate yet similarly constrictive social structures. On the commune, not only is Martha seen being officially initiated into the commune through rough sex with Patrick, but she is also seen having to adhere to a hard-nosed, quasi-socialist sense of shared living, wherein simply popping a bite of food during preparation is met with physical abuse and a harsh scolding. At Lucy's place, food is plentiful and every amenity imaginable is provided. But there is also a sense of social conservatism, as Martha's nude swimming is met with panic from Lucy; her lack of drive, initiative, ambition or movement is also scrutinized and construed by Ted as laziness.That the basic political backdrop of the film never overrides the stormy mood is a testament to both Durkin, who also wrote the perceptive, if a bit dull script, and his leading lady. The ruptures and outbursts of fear that Martha experiences emerge naturally through Olsen, spurred by such minor encounters as a familiar-looking party bartender and a dropped phone call. Much of this, however, emanates from a terrifying home-invasion scene in which one of Patrick's more devout followers butchers a man in his own home.
Durkin smartly leaves a great deal of the presumable abuse unseen but we feel it in Olsen's beguilingly strong debut performance. It is by every measure a smartly executed, beautifully understated thriller, moving fluidly from suspense to dread and back again. Still, I can't help but notice a hesitancy joined to Durkin's consistency, a first-timer's understandable siding with a safe, tight aesthetic over more wildly personal touches, liberated character trajectories and shifts in emotional strength. In this case, the restraint works and certainly makes me anticipate Durkin's next feature, but I maintain a certain modicum of suspicion in my anticipation.
