Saint Maud
STUDIO CANALRose Glass’ debut feature film, Saint Maud, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019, takes a searing look at religious fanaticism. As a whole, it thrives on ambiguity and leaves the audience wondering whether the main character is really being guided by divine intervention, demonic possession, or delusion. It is a slow burn art-house horror film, but does incredibly effective job at building the tension.
It's extraordinary how much Rose Glass squeezes into her debut feature, which runs only 84 minutes: stunning performances by Morfydd Clark and Jennifer Ehle, thematic complexity and extraordinarily well-handled perspectival ambiguity, haunting aesthetic design. Looking at issues such as trauma, faith, fundamentalism, and sexuality, the film has much more going on than the generic horror elements one might expect.
The story follows Maud (Morfydd Clark), taking a job as a live-in carer for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a dancer who has terminal spine cancer. Maud is filled with religious fervor and wants to save Amanda's soul and provide domestic care. Amanda smokes and drinks, wanting to live a hedonistic lifestyle during her final days. Though Maud disapproves, they reach a modus vivendi for a time. Eventually, Maud's reverence coming up against Amanda results in a worrying clash.
Both central characters do an incredible job. We see Amanda in the moment, rather than as a point-of-view character, being portrayed alternatively pitiable in her dying state. She is cruel in her treatment of Maud, in ways that are intentionally impactful as the film unfolds, and Ehle conveys this perfectly. Clark, on the other hand, portrays Maud as a determined, well-intentioned, soft-spoken Welsh girl, with a strongly devout Christian faith. However, she is always a bad moment away from snapping. Clark is excellent with her physical acting, but especially her expressions, as in two specific moments she contorts her face into shapes that make one unsettled, and carries this all the way through. Her performance is particularly masterful due to her ability to weave such a fine line between sanity and madness.
A female perspective in this male-dominated genre is refreshing and fascinating. The film employs compelling techniques including pulse quickening ambient sound, funnel clouds that mirror Maud's disordered state of mind, sideways and upside-down camerawork to portray drunken delirium and more. Everything, from the sound design, to the eerie score and the chilling cinematography is spot on, providing an unsettling experience that audiences will never forget.
All in all, Saint Maud proves to be one of the best modern art-house horror films of the decade, due to its tight script, eye-opening performances and gorgeously bleak cinematography. It has to be watched with full attention to be appreciated, because it focuses on the feeling rather than the truth of the experience. Viewers are immersed in it from the very moment that they dip into the core of the story, and are not allowed out from that point onwards. Disturbing, horrifying, challenging, unpredictable and occasionally quite emotional, this is a film that forms a path entirely of its own, and is as impressive and daring a directorial debut as you're ever likely to find.