Rising star Clark will convert you
THE BIG RELEASE SAINT Maud 15 ★★★★★
EVER since debut writer/ director Rose Glass won the £50,000 IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Bursary Award last year, Saint Maud has been hailed as the second coming of British cinema. And lordy, it could do with a saviour right now.
Rising star Morfydd Clark is a revelation as Maud (not her real name), a meek and mousey palliative care worker living in a seedy seaside town. Her latest client is Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a 49-year-old ‘dancer, choreographer and minor celebrity’ with terminal spinal lymphoma and a weakness for Champagne and younger women. A religious zealot, Maud believes she’s been sent by God to save Amanda’s soul. Amanda toys with Maud, mocking her faith – a dangerous move as Maud’s grip on reality spirals out of control.
The Exorcist, Carrie, Repulsion, Under The Skin and Don’t Look Now are all swirled in this mix but Saint Maud is possessed by a thrillingly original gothic atmosphere all its own. And hold on to your halos, folks, because this bumpy body horror is not for the squeamish. ‘Never waste your pain’ is Maud’s motto and she boasts an inventive line in selfharm (you’ll never want to look at a drawing pin again).
Ehle is tremendous and, as ever, you only wish there was more of her. But this is Clark’s showcase. Maud is a seething mass of impulses and Clark miraculously contains her character’s agony and ecstasy and vulnerability and anger within a single threedimensional being.
It ranks up there with Lupita Nyong’o in Us and Toni Collette in Hereditary as one of the finest (and sure to be similarly overlooked come awards season) horror performances of the century.
Vibrating to Adam Janota Bzowski’s unsettling score, Glass’s movie crawls under your skin and lays slithering eggs in your head. Praise be this is only 84 minutes long – in the run-up to those final, searing, jaw-dropping seconds I was clenching my face hard like Edvard Munch’s picture The Scream.