Film Review: Saint Maud

 

You’ll get a lot of bang for your buck with this film. It’s described as a drama/horror/mystery, and all those elements are certainly there, as are religion, carnality, piousness (pretended if not felt), jealousy, even supernatural dreams and – strangely enough – humor.

If that sounds exhausting, fear not: first-time writer/director Rose Glass puts it all together into a fascinating whole in “Saint Maud.”

In the somewhat cheesy British seaside town of Scarborough, a pious young nurse (Morfydd Clark) takes a new job caring for a retired dancer/choreographer ravaged by cancer. Amanda (Jennifer Ehle) is a woman of some renown, with an expansive personality, several books and many friends to her credit. 

The nurse is another case entirely: a recent convert to Catholicism (apparently the result of an unnamed trauma), she has decided to dedicate her life to God, and now is quietly insistent and determined to save Amanda’s soul. But Amanda wants no part of this. 

Amanda (brilliantly portrayed by Ehle) dubs the nurse “Saint Maud,” and the deeper we go into this story, the weirder things get, as the aforementioned elements begin to appear. As does Maud’s vulnerability.

Maud does seem to be a competent nurse; the physical therapy she does on Amanda’s legs (with massage and manipulation) gives Amanda some much-appreciated pain relief. But even this mutual comfort leads to a horrifying flashback for Maud.

Maud’s usual escape is a walk to sea, where a somewhat cheesy carney is in operation. One day she bumps into Joy (Lily Knight), a nursing colleague from pre-conversion days, and they exchange phone numbers. Will this lead somewhere?

Clark turns in a sterling performance as the tortured nurse who seems to be trying to escape the world by means of religion, only to find more problems.

Glass gives us an impressive debut film. Her judicious use of ominous sounds and familiar horror film tropes like a cockroach on the wall keep us in horror-film mode. But what she does particularly well is to keep us guessing about what Maud will do next and what that will do to her fragile psyche. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, the film goes somewhere else. I love that in a movie.

“Saint Maud” opens Feb. 12 on EPIX.