Capital Celluloid - Day 293: Saturday Oct 22

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Durkin, 2011): Vue, Leicester Square, 3.15pm
This film is also on at Vue on Friday 21st at 8.30pm and Monday 24th at 3pm. Details here.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is screening as part of the London Film Festival. Here is my general introduction to the festival. Over the length of the festival I will pick a film a day. I am as confident as I can be that this is the pick of the movies within the parameters I have set - the movies you are likely to get a ticket for and the ones you are unlikely to see in London very soon unless you go to the festival.

Time Out review:

'The American indie toast of both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals, Sean Durkin’s unnerving and insidiously offbeat horror-thriller exposes the sinister underside of religious cult deprogramming via an ingeniously suggestive and prickly performance from Elizabeth Olsen. It opens with a dishevelled and volatile Martha (Olsen) seeking refuge with her pedantic older sister (Paulson) and prig hubby (Dancy) in their sterile lakeside retreat. Formally (and, for that matter, atmospherically) we’re deep in ‘Last Year At Marienbad’ country, as the film switches back and forth in time to offer a series of layered and increasingly uncomfortable reveals as to what questionable deeds our multi-monikered heroine has been up to for the last two years. It may be a question of taste, but Dancy felt like the loose-link here: a technically strong performance, but a clichéd take on Brit obstinacy that threatened to cloud more pressing thematic concerns. Still, a very minor quibble for an otherwise majorly impressive and rigorous nightmare movie.' David Jenkins

Great trailer.


Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't worry if the film is sold out as there are always some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each screening. Here is the information you need to get those standby tickets.

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