REVIEW 061here is a paradox in Saint Maud, the first
feature from writer/director Rose Glass.
Although it constantly, closely tracks
its central character Maud (Morfydd Clark), and
restricts itself to her point of view right up until
its very final image, the film is dominated by
dialectics. Young Maud’s status as a private live-in
nurse affords her plenty of opportunity to converse
with her 49-year-old patient Amanda (Jennifer
Ehle). As a Christian convert, Maud is in constant
dialogue with her past secular self (who even had
a different name), and with the relatively recent
traumatic experience that led to her acquisition of
faith. The voiceover narration from Maud which
regularly punctuates the film’s events may have
the function of an interior monologue, but it is
formally presented as a conversation with God – a
conversation that is only at first one-way.
Every psychodrama requires a primal scene.
Saint Maud’s is first shown at the beginning with
impressionistic abstraction – a supine long-haired
woman dripping blood from her hospital stretcher,
Maud curled up into a corner in her medical
scrubs with literal blood on her hands, and a large
beetle scuttling across the ceiling above – and is
later reconstituted in increasingly hallucinatory
versions. A former dancer, choreographer and
woman of the world, Amanda is amused by her
primly ascetic carer, and whether because her stage
four lymphoma has her suddenly entertaining
spiritual matters, or perhaps just because she
is bored, Amanda indulges Maud’s claims about
having a direct line to the divine. Maud sees inAmanda a chance to redeem, even exalt, herself by
saving another’s soul – and though she may repress
and deny it, the love she feels for her patient is
more than just godly. In this fraught mix of lust,
devotion and delusion, it is clear that the self–
tormenting Maud is going to crack – but even as
we see the fissures starting to form, and hear the
(Welsh) voice of God instructing His lost lamb in
the path to salvation, the film generates unbearable
tension both from our uncertainty as to what Maud
might do, and from our conflicted feelings towards
a figure who is at once sympathetic victim and
manipulative menace.
In the exchanges between these two very
different women, and between their opposing,
only occasionally intersecting ideologies of
faith and secularism, Glass offers the binary
perspectives that drive the film. For while Ben
Fordesman’s camera reels and sways to Maud’s
out-of-step rhythms, and takes us on a canted trip
through her distorted spin on reality, the earthier
Amanda grounds everything, so that her absence
coincides with Maud’s peaks of unravelling.
All this takes place in coastal Scarborough, and
the climactic sequence unfolds on the beach, a
shifting strip where land and sea are in constant
dialogue. Ultimately, Maud herself will occupy a
liminal space, whether stuck in the mundanity that
others see, or transcending to a different plane, and
whether elevated to a Blakean heaven or engulfed
in a hell of her own making. Either way, it is an
arresting close to a debut that grips from beginning
to bitter end. ANTON BITELDirected by
ROSE GLASS
Starring
MORFYDD CLARK
JENNIFER EHLE,
LILY KNIGHT
Released
1 MAY
ANTICIPATION.
Good buzz from its festival
premiere.
ENJOYMENT.
A queasily tense descent
into the blindest of faith.
IN RETROSPECT.
Two expertly performed,
irreconcilable positions dance on
the shore.
Saint Maud
T