MARTYRS ( 2008 )
SYNOPSIS
A young girl, Lucie Jurin, escapes from a disused abattoir where she has been imprisoned and physically abused for a long time. The perpetrators and their motivations remain a mystery. Lucie is placed in an orphanage, where she is befriended by a young girl named Anna Assaoui. Anna discovers that Lucie believes that she is constantly being terrorized by a ghoulish creature; a disfigured emaciated woman.
Fifteen years later, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) bursts into the home of an apparently normal family with a shotgun, the Belfonds—Gabrielle, her husband, and their children Antoine and Marie—and kills them all. Elsewhere, Anna (Morjana Alaoui) waits for Lucie. Although Anna knows that Lucie believes the Belfonds are the people responsible for her childhood abuse, she is horrified when Lucie tells her that she has killed them. She discovers that Gabrielle is still alive and tries to help her escape. Unfortunately, Lucie bludgeons Gabrielle to death. Lucie is again attacked by the scarred creature, but Anna only sees Lucie hurting herself; the 'creature' is nothing more than a psychological manifestation of Lucie's guilt for leaving behind another girl who was also tortured with her as a child. Lucie, realizing that her insanity will never leave her, commits suicide.[4]
The next day, Anna, still at the family's house, telephones her mother, from whom she has been estranged; their conversation implies that Anna suffered abuse from her parents as a child. Anna discovers a secret underground chamber. Imprisoned within is a horribly tortured young girl, Sarah, proving that Lucie was right about the family. Anna helps Sarah but a group of strangers arrive and shoot Sarah dead. Captured, Anna meets their leader, an elderly lady referred to as Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle explains that she belongs to a secret philosophical society seeking to discover the secrets of the afterlife through the creation of "martyrs". Their experiments inflict systematic acts of torture upon young women in the belief that their suffering will result in a transcendental insight into the world beyond this one.
As a result of her selfless actions of helping Lucie and Sarah, Anna becomes the group's latest subject. After a period of being beaten and degraded, Anna hallucinates a conversation with Lucie, and is later told she has progressed further than any other test subject, and has reached the "final stage." She is flayed alive and survives the procedure, entering a state that is "euphoric" and likened to achieving transcendence. Mademoiselle arrives eagerly and Anna whispers into her ear.
Members of the society gather at the house to learn of the insights Anna shared with Mademoiselle. As he waits, Mademoiselle's assistant asks her if what Anna said was clear. Mademoiselle says yes, then asks him if he could imagine what comes after death. When he says no, she tells him to "keep doubting" before shooting herself.
The film ends with a shot of Anna on the table, in a catatonic state.
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