Morfydd Clark finds God – or does she? – in those scary, hallucinatory and brilliant British debut
Now that James Bond has skedadded with his Walther PPK between his legs, UK cinema is on the hunt for a savior Enter a young frosty hospice nurse with a festering messiah complex and the kind of dazzling that could send Covid sneak behind the fridge
Saint Maud is playing on more than 300 screens from this Friday: a copper deployment for a first feature film certainly, but even far from the current cinematographic drought, the thorny creation of the writer-director Rose Glass would justify more than the hubbub
It’s an evil psychological horror that takes place in Scarborough, if you will, where Maud (Morfydd Clark) has just been assigned a new patient A brief prologue tells us that the start of Maud’s career has been ruined through some unspecified macabre trauma, after which she found religion – or rather an extremely frightening twist, in which « God » sometimes visits her in private moments and assails her with waves of sensation that brings her down on the ground and ecstatic convulsive
Her agency, which completely ignores all of this, sends Maud to a ruined mansion on the cliffs above the town in which Amanda Köhl (Jennifer Ehle) resides, a former dancer whose battle with cancer has failed. not annihilated his dragged libertine
« You’re dangerously getting Norma Desmond, » chides one of Amanda’s old friends (Marcus Hutton) – and, slumped royally on the sofa in her scarf and dressing gown, she’s certainly watching the Sunset Boulevard party Maud, however, is not the parasitic type of William Holden: if she is partly bewitched by this older woman, she also quickly comes to see her as a soul to be urgently saved. Of what, however?
It’s more about who: she is Carol (Lily Frazer), Amanda’s vivacious young « companion », who comes to visit her most evenings and sometimes gives Maud a smirk as she walks past. her to get another bottle of champagne from the fridge
Maud’s obsession turns into resentment, which in turn triggers a spiraling descent into a full-blown fire and brimstone psychosis Amanda first attempts to sort things out with a book of demonic paintings by William Blake, which in this case is a bit like trying to fix things with an arsonist by giving them a monogrammed Zippo
With zesty notes from Lynne Ramsay, Roman Polanski and Lars von Trier, Saint Maud is a film to be approached with caution – and also a pure movie buff Glass is less interested in pinning his anti-heroine as a prophetess or fantasist than to corner her audience with the possibility that either could be the case, even as we watch events unfold exclusively from Maud’s inflexible perspective
These aforementioned ravishing tours look genuine enough In an extraordinary scene, Maud is struck as she walks up the stairs to Amanda’s house, and it’s as if the floral tendrils on the faded Arts and Crafts wallpaper were writhing in sympathy In another, she arches back and begins to levitate as fireworks (perhaps New Years Eve) rumble and crackle outside – a moment of dread and dread. impregnable cinematic strangeness
Even Scarborough itself feels a touch of another world, from the bubbling overcast skies to the flashing lights of waterfront entertainment, which take on a groggy and hallucinatory veil
Is this horror? It’s certainly often gruesome, and viewers should brace themselves for both explicit and implicit blood, a fear of jumping for the ages, and one brief but unforgettable last photo that could rightly be described as a scorching retina.
Yet Glass doesn’t really embrace or even play with genre conventions here: much like Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse in February, Saint Maud plows its own distinctive groove in every shot, and if so be suspenseful or scary, well so be it
Glass could hardly have asked for two more gambling accomplices than Clark and Ehle, who play the well, you-know-where of their respective roles, and both are naturally in tune with the film’s obscure sensuality, loaded with wavelength dread
In what has become a banner year for British cinema – also during a pandemic; you have to love timing – Saint Maud heralds the arrival of an exciting and distinctive new voice Even if the cinemas themselves fall into obscurity, that’s enough to rejuvenate your faith
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Saint Maud
News from around the world – GB – Revue de Saint Maud: a horror that stings the skin to restore confidence in the cinema
