spoilers from Saint Maud, including the ending.
Horror as a genre is preoccupatied with female sexuality, and often this leads to rather tired and sexist tropes, which isn t surprising in a male-dominated genre. In Rose Glass feature directorial debut, she pushes against these expectations with the unsettling new psychological thriller she wrote, Saint Maud.
The film stars Morfydd Clark as Maud, a newly devout hospice nurse who becomes obsessed with saving the immortal soul of her dying patient, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a famous dancer and choreographer who has retired to the shore of a resort town for the final months of her life. Maud s transformation throughout the film plays with many familiar genre elements – religion, sexuality, and physical trauma – in unexpected ways that elevates the film.
Photo: A24
Appropriately enough for a film whose horror is rooted in nightmarish twists on Christian theology,
Saint Maud has risen again. Following its buzzy debut at TIFF in 2019, the film which we summarized in our review as “a blend of talky chamber drama, Paul Schrader-esque character study, and visceral body horror” was picked up by A24 and scheduled for a release in March of 2020. Then, well, you know. But now, 11 months later,
Saint Maud is finally out on VOD, and our interview with Glass, conducted back in April of last year, is being published.
Saint Maud stars Morfydd Clark as the title character, a home nurse in a chilly English seaside town whose newfound piety and new job are the direct result of the film’s enigmatic opening scene, which sees Maud crouched in the corner of a hospital room with her hands covered in blood. Now working in the private sector, Maud is assigned to Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a retired dancer with only a few months left to live. Closed
Film of the Week: Nurseâs tale is anything but saintly By Contributor Published: 15:00, 30 January 2021
Get the Inverness Courier sent to your inbox every week and swipe through an exact replica of the day s newspaper
Saint Maud (Cert. 15, 84 mins, available from Monday on DVD/Blu-ray and to download and stream)
Starring: Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle, Lily Frazer
Kate (Morfydd Clark) prays daily, unwavering in her devotion.
âI canât shake the feeling that you must have saved me for something greater than this,â she rhapsodises to her God in the cramped confines of a sparsely furnished flat.
Maud walks away from the NHS to work in the private sector as a carer to famed American dancer and choreographer Amanda Kohl (Jennifer Ehle), whose halcyon days of hedonism and artistic expression have been cut short by terminal illness.