FILM

USA 2011 102 mins Dir: Sean Durkin Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy, John Hawkes

The tongue-twisty title should present quite a challenge at the box office, but signals that this is a film dealing primarily with identity - specifically the ways in which the vulnerable and insecure can be bent to the will of a cunning manipulator. Once Martha (Olsen) is snared in the web of charismatic, guitar-pickin' cult leader Patrick (Hawkes) on an outwardly idyllic rural commune, the first thing he does is take away her name. "You look like a Marcy May to me," he says with a crocodile smile, flattering this fatally needy waif with the attention she so obviously craves.

The film opens with Martha fleeing through the woods, hotly pursued by one of Patrick's underlings. No violence is used in his attempt to persuade her to return, but that fact that she's shaking with fear suggests none is needed. Summoning up the courage to phone Lucy (Paulson), the guilt-plagued sister she hasn't seen for two years, Martha is whisked to the palatial Connecticut lakeside abode her sibling shares with corporate hubby Ted (Dancy). But her increasingly anti-social behaviour and refusal to discuss what happened threatens to drive a wedge between the couple. Past, present, dreams and memories then begin to meld as the cult's Manson-esque tendencies are revealed.

The trump card of writer/director Sean Durkin's feature debut is its psychological plausibility, especially in the way the cult's women are made complicit in the sexual abuse of newcomers. Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of the shiny Olsen twins, gives a tremendous performance as Martha, while John Hawkes must surely rank as indie cinema's pre-eminent Mr Sinister after this and 'Winter's Bone'. The only mis-step is Durkin's deployment of a cop-out 'Another Earth'-style 'enigmatic' ending. (Robin Askew)

Website www.foxsearchlight.com/marthamarcymaymarlene/

Opens: February 3

Copyright Robin Askew 2012