In Valley theaters this weekend; on Epix starting February 12:
Saint Maud--The title character is a young in-home nurse assigned to care for Amanda, a terminally ill choreographer and dancer, in a mansion overlooking a bleak British seaside town. Maud is a devout Catholic, recently converted after a tragedy. She's pretty sure that God has plans for her bigger than nursing drudgery, and finally it hits her: she's meant to save the soul of the worldly, terrified Amanda.
What ensues in this devotional shocker written and directed by Rose Glass, along with clashes between Maud and Amanda and her circle, are unbidden, overwhelming and apparently orgasmic spiritual ecstasies, terrifying and exalted visions, and self-harm and mortification of the flesh. It's like a Hammer film directed by Bergman or Dreyer, with more than a dash of Ken Russell. How much of what we see is Maud's tortured psychology and how much is truly supernatural is left ambiguous. The overall effect is potently horrific and sad, yet also startlingly, joltingly erotic at times.
Much of the movie's power derives from the Welsh actress Morfydd Clark, who plays Maud. She avoids an obvious pitfall--playing her as a wide-eyed, rapturous innocent--and gives Maud a businesslike edge, but with touches of gnawing uncertainty at her mission, and a heartbreaking underlying sense of despair. She's superb, and Jennifer Ehle, as Amanda, monstrously inconvenienced by her illness but keen-eyed for any diversion, is no slouch. These performances are heavenly.
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