Deceived by the scruffy ginger counselor who’s the only boy near her emotional age at Emily Dickinson Writing Camp, Marion ditches lunch duty and jumps the next bus out of town. Alone and friendless, she holes up in a nowhere motel, ignoring the nagging calls from her sister and indulging in utter anonymity. There Marion meets Norman, and each is haunted by the feeling that they’ve met the other before. Like a garage band covering a string quartet, freshman director Jesse Robinson rebuilds Psycho from a looser, warmer material. Young and Innocent throws a haze across Hitchcock’s spartan menace, replacing autumnal chill with summer swelter, and adult frailty with the languageless longings of adolescence.
