Martha Marcy May Marlene

 If a murderous, mind-controlled rapist threatens you,

use this gun to...uh, never mind...

Grade: B

Director: Sean Durkin

Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Maria Dizzia and Hugh Dancy

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

The unsettling soul of Martha Marcy May Marlene is best captured by its enigmatic bookends. A seemingly inscrutable title effectively conveys the absolute loss of identity suffered by its female protagonist, followed by an open-ended denouement that – while certain to frustrate audiences –  nonetheless leaves little doubt about the young girl’s ultimate fate.

In between is a haunting, harrowing tale that shares parallels with Winter’s Bone, last year’s indie awards darling, beyond their shared Sundance Institute genesis and the common casting of John Hawkes. Both films use rural settings and anxious atmospherics to tell the tales of young women grappling with a loss of family and innocence, along with the sinister forces that fill the void.

Writer-director Sean Durkin rotates between two timelines, at times cutting away within scenes and even single shots, in the life of Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), a young woman who flees a controlling cult located in the Catskill Mountains during the film’s opening scene. A desperate Martha telephones Katie (Maria Dizzia), her older sister, who brings Martha to live with her and newlywed husband Ted (Hugh Dancy) at the couple’s lakeside Connecticut vacation home.

The narrative swings between Martha’s attempt to assimilate into her sister’s life after a two-year absence and flashbacks to Martha’s introduction and eventual indoctrination into the cruel cult run by Patrick (Hawkes), the group’s Mansonic leader. Durkin’s depiction of life at the commune is both clever and disconcerting, a slow immersion that emulates Patrick’s hold over his cadre of subservient women. When Martha is introduced to Patrick, his seemingly harmless salutation – “You look like a Marcy May.” – is the deliberate first step in a gradual brainwashing process. Durkin’s portrayal is so measured that the audience soon becomes as numb as Martha / Marcy May to the cult’s horrors.

Durkin wisely places more value on a dread of the unseen. When Patrick coaxes Marcy May into shooting a sickly cat, we never see the kitty but only hear its plaintive meow. “He only has boys,” Marcy May casually responds to a new convert’s observation that all of Patrick’s infant children are male, leaving it to the audience’s imagination to decipher an awful truth.

What’s quite clear, however, is that while Katie holds a natural concern for her sister, she also exudes a chronic self-absorption that betrays the domestic strife that once drove Martha to consider a cloistered cult as a surrogate family. Still, that insight is obvious during Martha’s first breakfast with Katie and Ted – the rest of the time is filled with so many repetitive demonstrations of Martha’s fractured psyche and Katie’s insensitivity that you eventually feel compelled to scream, “Somebody call a shrink!”

Olsen’s performance throughout is somber and self-assured, a promising debut encouraged perhaps by her own efforts to escape the suffocating shadow – and cult of personality – of older siblings. Olsen was busy attending the Tisch School of the Arts and Atlantic Theater Company in New York while sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley were making bad movies, gaudy fashion and tabloid headlines. If nothing else, Martha Marcy May Marlene carves out Elizabeth’s own identity – here’s hoping her story has a happy ending.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at www.indyweek.com - http://goo.gl/7QYZ5

Adam

I like to chase my meds with Tang

Grade: C

Director: Max Mayer

Starring: Hugh Dancy, Rose Byrne, Peter Gallagher, and Amy Irving

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 39 minutes

At first blush, disparaging a heart-of-gold film like Adam is rather like pulling the wings off a butterfly. We first meet the eponymous Adam (Hugh Dancy) on the eve of his father’s funeral, leaving the young Asperger’s syndrome sufferer to live alone in his New York City apartment, a meager existence anchored by only his job as an electrical engineer for children’s toys.

Enter Beth (Rose Byrne), the nice girl in a strange town, who is drawn to her socially inept, high-functioning autistic neighbor from the moment he lets her borrow his laundry card and starts babbling obsessively about astronomy.

The narrative use of mental illness works when it serves as a springboard for examining some larger cultural or symbolic significance, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. On the other hand, in a film like Rain Man, it is simply offensive when used as a gimmick to prop up an otherwise mundane plot.

Adam was an award-winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where writer-director Max Mayer claimed that that his narrative use of Asperger’s is a metaphor for “the tension between all us human beings […and] the desire to connect to one another.” However, it is never clear why Beth takes such a shine to Adam, and even as their relationship transitions from friendship to physical, her affections never feel much different than those normally afforded an abandoned child. Beth is perfectly willing to enjoy the charming, childlike qualities of Adam’s condition, but she runs for the hills the (unrealistically few) times he throws a temper tantrum or manifests some other unpleasant side effect.

Ultimately, Beth acts more as Adam’s social guide dog, steering him toward so-called proper behavior until she discerns it’s time to release her pet-project back into the wild. Backed by mawkish musical cues, Mayer treats Adam’s idiosyncrasies like a curiosity servicing a humdrum storyline that also aimlessly sidetracks through the legal travails of Beth’s white-collar father (Peter Gallagher).

“I’m not Forrest Gump, you know,” deadpans Adam when Beth gifts him a box of chocolates. Unfortunately, Adam is a pedestrian film in which, protagonist’s eccentricities aside, you pretty much know what you’re going to get.

Neil Morris

Confessions of a Shopaholic

The economic stimulus debate - now in Technicolor!

Grade: B –

Director: P.J. Hogan

Starring: Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, Krysten Ritter, Joan Cusack, John Goodman, Kristin Scott Thomas, John Lithgow, Fred Amisen, Robert Stanton, and Julie Hagerty

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

The time, place, and tenor of Confessions of a Shopaholic opens itself to obvious accusations that it is merely a cheap knockoff of such haute couture homages as The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City. Here, Manhattan-based protagonist Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher, Wedding Crashers) intones Carrie Bradshaw-esque monologues about fashion; her roommate, Suze (Krysten Ritter), physically resembles a cross between Devil costars Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt; Kristin Scott Thomas plays a frosty French style magazine editor, following in the Prada-clad footsteps of Meryl Streep.

Indeed, a disconnect seemingly runs throughout this adaptation of the first two books in British writer Sophie Kinsella's popular series. Fashionistas will ogle the endless array of Gucci, Burberry and Yves Saint Laurent literally bursting out of Rebecca's closet (the film's costume designer is Patricia Field, who did similar work for Devil ... and Sex ...). Meanwhile, other viewers will choose to focus on the revolving credit lines and compounding interest endemic to Rebecca's corrosive consumerism. Her predilection for $200 underwear and $78 jars of honey soon adds up to $16,000 of debt accrued on 12 maxed-out credit cards. At her most literal and cynical, Beck is a sherbert-colored offshoot of the debtor society that has marched us to the edge of our current economic precipice.

Foiled in her attempt to land her dream job with a trendy fashion journal, Rebecca settles for work at a struggling money magazine, where she parlays her angst into a column on financially prudent shopping. The column becomes an overnight sensation, catapulting Rebecca and her dreamy Brit boss (Hugh Dancy) into celebrity. All the while, Rebecca does her best to conceal her personal financial woes and dodge a persistent collections agent (Robert Stanton).

Aussie director P.J. Hogan (Muriel's Wedding and My Best Friend's Wedding) keeps the message buoyant and mostly on point. Indeed, the film flies when Hogan accentuates the sly and surreal. During an elevator ride following a relapse of Rebecca's shopping binges, a muzak version of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" plays in the background. And, a veritable chorus of animated mannequins appears throughout the film to woo Rebecca with its siren song of crass consumption.

Hogan's keen direction complements sturdy supporting turns from Thomas, John Lithgow, Joan Cusack, John Goodman and even Julie Hagerty. But, Fisher's razor-sharp comic timing is the true star, single-handedly generating an effervescent, whip-smart spunk that carries the film through several dull spots. Thematically speaking, Confessions of a Shopaholic tries to have its cake and eat it too, but Fisher turns out to be the icing that hides any imperfections.

Neil Morris