Saint Maud (2020)
Directed by Rose Glass
Having recently found God, self-effacing young nurse Maud arrives at a plush home to care for Amanda, a hedonistic dancer left frail from a chronic illness. When a chance encounter with a former colleague throws up hints of a dark past, it becomes clear there is more to sweet Maud than meets the eye.
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The second half of the movie tumbles with Maud down a spiral of female solitude and hallucinatory madness that invokes cinematic precedents as varied as Ingmar Bergman’s Persona , Roman Polanski’s Repulsion , and Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar .
If there’s precedent for “Saint Maud,” it would be Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” (1965), in which Catherine Deneuve goes murderously bonkers over the course of one very long weekend.
A sophisticated creep-fest from debuting feature director Rose Glass, “Maud” owes some debt to the Roman Polanski of “Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” to Brian De Palma’s “Carrie” and to the sound design of her own Paul Davies, whose unnerving noise recalls the better contemporary horror films of James Wan (“The Conjuring,” “Insidious”).
It’s a performance that shares DNA with Samantha Morton in Morvern Callar and Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion : bold, uncompromising and vivid.
There are films like Polanski’s 1965 film Repulsion , which take on a more surreal depiction of the effects of loneliness and a woman’s mental state, but Saint Maud is unsettling because of the realistic situations and intense portrayals.
Although its dark, uneasy atmosphere and sometimes gruesome imagery lean in the direction of horror—Roman Polanski's Repulsion is an obvious influence—it is not a full-on horror film itself (apart from one wild jolt toward the end).
A slender but unholy cross between “First Reformed” and “The Exorcist,” Rose Glass’ taut and trembling “Saint Maud” transmutes a young woman’s spiritual crisis into such a refined story of body horror that genre fans might feel like they’re having a religious experience.
And Saint Maud certainly brings to mind De Palma’s film, as well as Friedkin’s The Exorcist .
But there are also great movies: The Devils (1971), The Omen (1976), and the Godfather of them all, The Exorcist (1973).
From Io, the mortal lover of Zeus who was turned into a cow, to "The Exorcist," the female body is prime for uncontrolled possession or transformation.
Glass’s story presents the two opposing viewpoints in ways that are clever and hearkens to classic horror movies like Carrie and The Exorcist .
The second half of the movie tumbles with Maud down a spiral of female solitude and hallucinatory madness that invokes cinematic precedents as varied as Ingmar Bergman’s Persona , Roman Polanski’s Repulsion , and Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar .
In its most piercing earthbound moments, “Saint Maud” even evokes the impressionistic human poetry of another shattered-woman study, Lynne Ramsay’s “Morvern Callar,” and not just because Clark has some of the young Samantha Morton’s moony, haunted ingenuousness.
It’s a performance that shares DNA with Samantha Morton in Morvern Callar and Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion : bold, uncompromising and vivid.
Her mesmerizing screen presence evokes Sissy Spacek in Carrie ; there’s an oddity to her mannerisms that provokes and entrances.
A sophisticated creep-fest from debuting feature director Rose Glass, “Maud” owes some debt to the Roman Polanski of “Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” to Brian De Palma’s “Carrie” and to the sound design of her own Paul Davies, whose unnerving noise recalls the better contemporary horror films of James Wan (“The Conjuring,” “Insidious”).
It’s a question that has been explored time and time again in cinema, from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc” to Brian De Palma’s “Carrie.”
The character bears some resemblance to Carrie White from Brain De Palma’s classic Carrie (1976), as they’re both young women who despite their best efforts are continually out of step with the world around them.
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When things get brutal in “Saint Maud,” it’s not at all in the same way things got brutal in a female-centered horror thriller such as Ari Aster’s “Hereditary.”
The psychological game of cat-and-mouse that develops between these two women boasts a tense, almost Hitchcockian vibe, and the slow-burn pace and blistering third-act payoff finds Saint Maud slotting neatly into distributor A24’s horror repertoire, alongside acclaimed entries like The Witch and Hereditary .
Likewise, the film’s A24 will understandably lead some to expect a supernatural blow-out in the vein of Hereditary or The Witch.
From barely heard whispers to scrapes and clicks that feel like they’re working their way into your ear canal, Saint Maud makes the best use of sound since Ari Aster’s terrifying 2018 film Hereditary .
There are definite similarities between Saint Maud and Hereditary and Midsommar in particular, with director Rose Glass appearing to have taken some cues from Ari Aster’s first two features.
Horror fans bemoan the lack of awards recognition for performances in horrors of late, and Clark's is up there with Toni Collette in Hereditary , and Lupita Nyong'o in Us – it's that good.
At one point, an acquaintance compares her to Norma Desmond, that faded silent film star from Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard .
One can imagine, for example, a version of the film in which Amanda is the villain of the piece, or at least the central character; with her magnanimous eccentricity and cavernous homestead, her relationship with the straight-laced Maud at first recalls such memorable screen characters as Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond or Performance’s Turner.
One of her few visitors venomously tells her that she is turning into Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond, but she also owes a debt to Little Edie, the headscarf-wearing, eccentric former socialite from the cult documentary Grey Gardens.
The second half of the movie tumbles with Maud down a spiral of female solitude and hallucinatory madness that invokes cinematic precedents as varied as Ingmar Bergman’s Persona , Roman Polanski’s Repulsion , and Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar .
The influence of Ingmar Bergman's Persona, with which it shares certain plot points, looms large.
The ensuing dance between troubled ascetic and ciggy-smoking sensualist kicks off with shades of the psychological frictions of Persona , a major influence on Saint Maud , and goes downhill fast from there.
Following a series of acclaimed short films, Rose Glass blends Joan of Arc and Carrie by way of Persona in her striking, self-assured debut about obsession, faith, and why it’s best if you don’t give that book of William Blake paintings to an evangelical Christian with a penchant for sharp objects.
Morfydd Clark , who demonstrated such perfect comic timing in Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield , is astonishing as the titular private carer nursing Jennifer Ehle’s Amanda, a once-celebrated dancer now facing the spectre of death.
The story is about Maud (Morfydd Clark, The Personal History of David Copperfield ), a young nurse starting out on a new palliative care placement.
In a way, this is very much a film inspired by Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” and its own earnest character Travis Bickle.
Comparisons will made to Taxi Driver (1976) and First Reformed (2017) in the way characters start placing themselves in the savior role when one isn’t called for.
Maud speaks directly to God, and the movie sometimes transmits her communications through voiceover that makes her sound a bit like a more pious version of Taxi Driver ’s Travis Bickle.
Maud is essentially Taxi Driver ’s Travis Bickle with a Welsh accent.
All else is unsettling the way that Travis Bickle’s unraveling violent machismo in Taxi Driver is unsettling.
For, as with Taxi Driver and Travis Bickle, Glass pulls off the nifty trick of being objective and subjective at the same time.
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In another vision, Glass stages a moment of levitation that’s at once awful and ecstatic, its own transcendental triumph while also recalling similar sequences in Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed.
Instead, Glass’ thriller is spiritually rigorous, to the point where it is almost like a sequel to Paul Schrader’s towering masterpiece First Reformed .
Comparisons will made to Taxi Driver (1976) and First Reformed (2017) in the way characters start placing themselves in the savior role when one isn’t called for.
While those films contained elements of horror, Maud is more in tune with Ethan Hawke’s minister in Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” or the priests in Martin Scorsese’s “Silence,” who are of a reasoned belief that leads them to horrific, or at least melodramatic, extremes.
Saint Maud , the impressive and thoroughly unnerving debut feature from British writer-director Rose Glass, is attuned to the agony and ecstasy of faith to a degree not seen since Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2017).
And Clark’s performance, however vulnerable, lacks the fire in the belly that made Ethan Hawke’s similarly troubled believer so powerful in Schrader’s First Reformed .
The psychological game of cat-and-mouse that develops between these two women boasts a tense, almost Hitchcockian vibe, and the slow-burn pace and blistering third-act payoff finds Saint Maud slotting neatly into distributor A24’s horror repertoire, alongside acclaimed entries like The Witch and Hereditary .
Likewise, the film’s A24 will understandably lead some to expect a supernatural blow-out in the vein of Hereditary or The Witch.
We saw this in the 2015 film "The Witch" in which a 17th century family who is banished from their colonial community and lives at the edge of a bleak New England forest.
It Comes at Night (2017) and The Witch (2015) were also presented as straightforward horrors when their scares were actually more psychological in nature.
Odes of Robert Eggers’ The Witch glimmer in Maud’s ethereal juncture to God, there’s a comparison to be made to Anya Taylor-Joy’s hair-raising talk to Black Phillip.
Of course, being from a studio that brought along films and future screening pairings The Witch and First Reformed , the hope one may have in Maud receiving the rewards for her pious ways will likely come with a twist of some kind.