Martha Mar­cy May Marlene

A remark­able first fea­ture from writer/​director Sean Durkin, the some­what awk­ward­ly titled Martha Mar­cy May Mar­lene is a tense and superbly act­ed analy­sis of trau­ma and vulnerability.

The film begins with a young woman exit­ing a din­er into the woods sur­round­ing upstate New York, hot­ly pur­sued by an aggres­sive male com­pan­ion. We lat­er learn that the woman, Martha (Eliz­a­beth Olsen) has escaped from the clutch­es of an oppres­sive, semi-reli­gious cult where women are enslaved by the male lead­ers and rit­u­al­ly sex­u­al­ly abused.

Seek­ing solace and shel­ter at the opu­lent Con­necti­cut lake­side home of her pre­co­cious sis­ter (Sarah Paul­son) and sim­i­lar­ly self-obsessed new hus­band (Hugh Dan­cy), Martha attempts to rid her­self of her vio­lent mem­o­ries and over­come the ter­ri­ble bur­den of guilt that haunts her, while the film ele­gant­ly shuf­fles between past and present to reveal the scale of this challenge.

Named after the alter­na­tive titles bestowed upon her by the cult’s self-appoint­ed leader (played by a seduc­tive, mes­meris­ing and increas­ing­ly ter­ri­fy­ing John Hawkes), Martha Mar­cy May Mar­lene evolved out of Durkin’s desire to present an inti­mate jour­ney into phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal peril.

Tak­ing a char­ac­ter-based approach fuelled by copi­ous research, Durkin also attempts to artic­u­late the pres­sure-cook­er of emo­tions impact­ing a young girl whose expe­ri­ence has left her with nag­ging and poten­tial­ly debil­i­tat­ing ques­tions about her place in soci­ety, her future and her own culpability.

In this regard the direc­tor is ably assist­ed by an incred­i­bly assured turn of depth and com­plex­i­ty from Olsen, remark­ably mak­ing her fea­ture debut. Olsen’s tremen­dous per­for­mance, in which she authen­ti­cal­ly cap­tures anguish and con­flic­tion, evokes com­par­i­son with Jen­nifer Lawrence in Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone.

Both films also share an evoca­tive sense of time and place, with Durkin’s ten­den­cy to use his pho­to­genic rur­al land­scapes in metaphor­i­cal terms also call­ing to mind Ter­rence Mal­ick. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Jody Lee Lipes is sim­i­lar­ly wor­thy of praise and is one of the deter­min­ing fac­tors in the film’s suc­cess in nav­i­gat­ing the numer­ous time shifts.

In less­er hands, Martha Mar­cy May Mar­lene could have had the look, feel and tone of an exploita­tion flick, giv­en the sex and vio­lence inher­ent in the mate­r­i­al. But Durkin’s deft touch ensures that it nev­er for a sin­gle moment strays into this all too famil­iar ter­rain, but retains instead both sub­tle­ty and grace.

Described by Durkin as being osten­si­bly about iden­ti­ty and the man­ner in which we adopt per­sonas for dif­fer­ent aspects of our lives, this is as much a film about young peo­ple look­ing for direc­tion and fail­ing to find it in an Amer­i­ca that also seems to have lost its way.