Martha Marcy May Marlene - herein known as MMMM

Yet another film that would have utterly passed me by were I not a semi-religious adherer to the Radio 5 film review podcast, MMMM was recommended as 'interesting' by Mark Kermode and so went straight on to my LoveFilm list before the DVD had even come out. Obviously a film like this was never going to get a release outside of London.

But what is 'a film like this'? The plot is that Martha (also known as Marcy to her family - played by Elizabeth Olsen) is a disturbed teenager who at the start of the film runs away from what appears to be a cult. The cult is strongly patriarchal. Run by the charismatic Patrick and several other men they charm lost girls and women to come and live with them by promising them an idealistic nature-loving lifestyle. Marcy runs away from the cult - who catch up with her briefly but let her go - and into the arms of her worried and conflicted sister (Lucy - played by Sarah Paulson who was last seen by me in the entertaining though mis-pitched Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). Marcy then struggles to find her place in her old family as her experiences at the group are slowly revealed through flashback. At the same time, Lucy and her boyfriend can't work out what to do with Marcy, as her behaviour continues to be outside of the societal norm.

The film's main theme is what is 'normal' behaviour? It's just what is expected of you from the group you live in, and if you live in a cult you become affected by the usual kind of group think that affects any person living in any self-promoting community. There is no axiomatic definition of a 'normal' life, and so when someone drags themselves out of one close-knit group and into another, their behaviour will naturally be perceived as weird.

I can see the film being criticised for being simplistic and perhaps Olsen for giving something of a one-dimensional performance. She basically plays a couple of different iterations on the mopey teenager; you can either see that as something very easy for a teenage actress to pull off, or something that requires great mental strain to do with any kind of realism. Sarah Paulson was pretty good in Studio 60, but the fact I've not seen her in anything else since isn't a great sign. Here she plays the concerned / frustrated sister / mother figure very well and I would expect to see her back in more mainstream films at some point - but what do I know?

I saw this before I went away to China recently and I've got a bunch of new reviews are sitting on my hard drive ready to go up as soon as I get sufficiently bored at work.  So you wont have to wait long.