Sean Durkin’s stunning debut feature “Martha Marcy May Marlene” has been running a steady marathon in terms of buzz-building ahead of its late-October release: first came breathless critical plaudits and the Best Director prize at Sundance in January, while a well-received appearance in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes kept things humming through the summer lull.
Expect the acclaim to continue through the fall festival run: it’s booked for Toronto, though as Kris speculated last week, it’ll probably pop up in Telluride beforehand. (Finally, I’d count on a London Film Festival date in October.)
The buzz isn’t there by sheer good fortune: as I wrote in my Cannes review, Durkin’s film is a startlingly assured and unsettling fusion of meticulous character study and full-throttle psychodrama, centered on a sharply etched breakout performance by Elizabeth Olsen that handily defies any pundits to define the young actress by her more famous twin sisters.