Sight&Sound - 05.2020

REVIEWS

80 | Sight&Sound | May 2020

office, or the aggressively institutional

green of the hospital. Color unifies and

abstracts in surprising moments: when Leo is

put into a cop car after a night of wandering the

streets, his lips, parted slightly, are illuminated

by the cruiser’s blood-red light. The scenes in

Mexico echo the austere framing of the desert

in Potter’s The Gold Diggers (1983), while the

scenes in Greece are ambiguous to the point

of abstraction. Like all great films about a

person who’s stuck in their own head, there

is an expansiveness to The Roads Not Taken –

which Leo cannot experience nor share.

In the final moments of the film, following

a difficult heart-to-heart, there are two

versions of Molly – one who is leaving to go

to work, and another who is staying with

him. It’s a rather bittersweet suggestion

that Leo will belatedly reimagine how he

spent the day before with his daughter.

Brooklyn, New York. Leo, who has a neurological

disorder, lies in bed, not responding to his bell or

mobile. His daughter Molly enters his apartment and

takes him to the dentist and to the optometrist. As

time passes, Leo recalls his life in Mexico with his first

wife, Dolores, and imagines that he goes to mourn

their son on the Day of the Dead. He also recalls

visiting a Greek island, where he writes his novel and

follows beautiful, much younger women. He rows out

to meet the giant yacht they’re aboard, but keeps

falling behind; eventually, he lies comatose in the

boat, and is discovered by sailors. It is unclear if this

is how his neurological disorder was first manifested,

or if it’s imaginary. Molly loses a job because she

has spent the day trying to care for her father. Leo

leaves his apartment and wanders through New

York. He is helped by two cabbies. Returning home,

he attempts to have a heart-to-heart talk with Molly.

They come to an understanding. Two versions of

Molly appear: one leaves, the other stays with him.

Produced by

Christopher Sheppard

Written by

Sally Potter

Director of

Photography

Robbie Ryan

Editors

Emilie Orsini

Sally Potter

Jason Rayton

Production Designer

Carlos Conti

Music by/Keyboards

Sally Potter

Production

Sound Mixer

Yves-Marie Omnes

Costume Designer

Catherine George

©British Broadcasting

Corporation and the

British Film Institute

and AP (Molly) Ltd

Production

Companies

Bleecker Street

and HanWay Films,

BFI and BBC Films

present in association

with Ingenious Media,

Head Gear Films and

Metrol Technology

an Adventure

Pictures production

in association with

Washington Square

Films and La Terraza

Films in co-production

with Chimney

and Film i Väst

A film by Sally Potter

Developed by

BBC Films

Developed with the

support of Pont

Neuf Productions

Made with the

support of the

BFI’s Film Fund

Executive Producers

Lizzie Francke

Rose Garnett

Joe Oppenheimer

Marie-Gabrielle

Stewart

Peter Watson

Andrew Karpen

Kent Sanderson

Peter Touche

Stephen Dailey

Phil Hunt

Compton Ross

Joshua Blum

Amy Hass

Edmon Roch

Cristóbal García

Frida Torresblanco

John Giwa-Amu

Cast

Javier Bardem

Leo

Elle Fanning

Molly

Branka Katic

Xenia

Milena Tscharntke

Anni

Laura Linney

Rita

Salma Hayek

Dolores

Dimitri Andreas

Mikael

Katia Mullova-Brind

Mel

In Colour

Distributor

Universal Pictures

International

UK & Eire

The me inside: Javier Bardem, Laura Linney

Credits and Synopsis

Reviewed by Ela Bittencourt

When it comes to horror, there is nothing

more frightening than the human mind.

This motto is brilliantly encapsulated in

the British writer-director Rose Glass’s debut

feature Saint Maud. As with other great religious

horror films – including Scott Derrickson’s

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and Cristian

Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills (2012) in the recent

crop, and to some extent Brian De Palma’s

1976 classic Carrie – the conjuration of wild

daylight visions and spiritual torments in

Saint Maud skilfully blurs the line between

a possible medical condition and outright

madness, while also slyly suggesting that

the film’s heroine may in fact be possessed.

In this respect, Glass borrows a page from

psychoanalysis by portraying zealous

spirituality as psychosomatic, but gives neither

the religious dogma nor medicine a final say.

In the film’s opening, a young woman,

Maud (Morfydd Clark), has suffered an

accident involving a patient while working

as a hospital nurse. The mysterious incident

is a mere flashback, but its gory tableau,

shrouded in sickly green colours, sets up Maud

as a tormented soul with a shadowy past. The

action then follows the tight-lipped, socially

awkward Maud to her next job, providing

palliative home care for a once-famous, now

disabled ex-dancer, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle).

Maud’s dedication to Amanda is absolute, but

she’s repulsed by Amanda’s lifestyle, which

includes recreational drinking and drugs.

Glass lavishes particular attention on

the way Maud and Amanda’s relationship

escalates, veering from adoration to scorn.

Her script shows both women as multifaceted:

Amanda, played with cool reserve and airy

sophistication by Ehle, is smitten with Maud’s

innocence and religious resolve, but also

finds her offensively small-minded. Maud,

brilliantly acted by Clark, is by contrast all

vulnerability and pent-up tension: fawning

in one scene, quick to lash out in another.

Glass stirs sexual jealousy into the mix, when

Amanda is visited by a female escort, and

Maud eavesdrops on the two, further blurring

the line between God’s purported whisperings

and tyrannical self-interest.

This rollercoaster of tormented emotions,

which feed into and off dogma, is aided by Ben

Fordesman’s astute cinematography, which

makes the most of tight framing. The camera

stays so close to the protagonists, particularly

Maud, that it allows us little space to see her

objectively. In the collapse of perspectival

distance lies the film’s rich ambiguity; the close-

ups obliterate the world and lock us into Maud’s

point of view, reinforcing the immensity of her

feelings and the extent to which these feelings

overwrite and distort her sense of space and

time, her notion of right and wrong.

As the images mutate from drab and prosaic

to more vividly disturbing, Glass slowly

chips away at our certainty about how to

interpret the story. By the time she rolls out the

spectacular finale, we have plunged so deep

into ecstasy that we’re ready to empathise with

Maud, perhaps even to dread her wrath.

Saint Maud

United Kingdom 2019

Director: Rose Glass

Certificate 15 84m 27s