Also in Friday morning's round-up of news briefs, Martha Marcy May Marlene director is heading for a TV gig. The Kids Are All Right director eyes her next project. And a British television star eyes joining the cast of August: Osage County.
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The most polarizing films are often those that dare to push the envelope farther than is expected or comfortable, whether audiences are ready for them or not, and for this reason I tend to find the divisive films more interesting than those with universal praise or derision. Simon Killer, from Afterschool director/Martha Marcy May Marlene producer Antonio Campos, reminded me of this rule when it debuted Friday at Sundance and left critics and bloggers somewhat split.
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One of the biggest discoveries you'll make this year -- and one of this fall's class of neophyte Oscar contenders -- is 22-year-old Elizabeth Olsen. The younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley may have earned her first credits as a child actor in her siblings' tween franchise-building movies, but she launches her very serious film career this October in the Sundance award-winning Martha Marcy May Marlene, Sean Durkin's deeply observed drama-thriller about a shell-shocked young woman (Olsen) who reunites with her family after spending years under the influence of a sexually abusive cult.
The opening scene of Sean Durkin's debut feature Martha Marcy May Marlene suggests we're in for a big rusty bread pan's worth of rural miserablism, and even though we're not, the yeasty grayness of those early moments is clearly intentional: A group of women in drab dresses and droopy T-shirts go about preparing dinner in a house whose unfinished interior looks either new and hastily erected or ancient and about to fall apart -- it's hard to tell which. A young boy stomps about in a dusty, scrubby yard; a woman sits on the porch working on a crocheted afghan. When dinner's ready, a bunch of men sit down to eat; then they leave the table -- the man who appears to be the leader murmurs something appreciative about the meal -- and the women take their places. Then there's one lone shot of a ton of dirty dishes jumbled into and around the kitchen sink -- there's no question who's going to be scouring them clean. It's as if Amishtown had been taken over by a nicer version of the Manson family.
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