Saint Maud

There is a para­dox in Saint Maud, the first fea­ture from writer/​director Rose Glass. Although it con­stant­ly, close­ly tracks its cen­tral char­ac­ter Maud (Morfy­dd Clark), and restricts itself to her point of view right up until its very final image, the film is dom­i­nat­ed by dialec­tics. Young Maud’s sta­tus as a pri­vate live-in nurse affords her plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­verse with her 49-year-old patient Aman­da (Jen­nifer Ehle).

As a Chris­t­ian con­vert, Maud is in con­stant dia­logue with her past sec­u­lar self (who even had a dif­fer­ent name), and with the rel­a­tive­ly recent trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence that led to her acqui­si­tion of faith. The voiceover nar­ra­tion from Maud which reg­u­lar­ly punc­tu­ates the film’s events may have the func­tion of an inte­ri­or mono­logue, but it is for­mal­ly pre­sent­ed as a con­ver­sa­tion with God – a con­ver­sa­tion that is only at first one-way.

Every psy­chodra­ma requires a pri­mal scene. Saint Maud’s is first shown at the begin­ning with impres­sion­is­tic abstrac­tion – a supine long-haired woman drip­ping blood from her hos­pi­tal stretch­er, Maud curled up into a cor­ner in her med­ical scrubs with lit­er­al blood on her hands, and a large bee­tle scut­tling across the ceil­ing above – and is lat­er recon­sti­tut­ed in increas­ing­ly hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry versions.

A for­mer dancer, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and woman of the world, Aman­da is amused by her prim­ly ascetic car­er, and whether because her stage four lym­phoma has her sud­den­ly enter­tain­ing spir­i­tu­al mat­ters, or per­haps just because she is bored, Aman­da indulges Maud’s claims about hav­ing a direct line to the divine. Maud sees in Aman­da a chance to redeem, even exalt, her­self by sav­ing another’s soul – and though she may repress and deny it, the love she feels for her patient is more than just godly.

In this fraught mix of lust, devo­tion and delu­sion, it is clear that the self– tor­ment­ing Maud is going to crack – but even as we see the fis­sures start­ing to form, and hear the (Welsh) voice of God instruct­ing His lost lamb in the path to sal­va­tion, the film gen­er­ates unbear­able ten­sion both from our uncer­tain­ty as to what Maud might do, and from our con­flict­ed feel­ings towards a fig­ure who is at once sym­pa­thet­ic vic­tim and manip­u­la­tive menace.

In the exchanges between these two very dif­fer­ent women, and between their oppos­ing, only occa­sion­al­ly inter­sect­ing ide­olo­gies of faith and sec­u­lar­ism, Glass offers the bina­ry per­spec­tives that dri­ve the film. For while Ben Fordesman’s cam­era reels and sways to Maud’s out-of-step rhythms, and takes us on a cant­ed trip through her dis­tort­ed spin on real­i­ty, the earth­i­er Aman­da grounds every­thing, so that her absence coin­cides with Maud’s peaks of unrav­el­ling. All this takes place in coastal Scar­bor­ough, and the cli­mac­tic sequence unfolds on the beach, a shift­ing strip where land and sea are in con­stant dialogue.

Ulti­mate­ly, Maud her­self will occu­py a lim­i­nal space, whether stuck in the mun­dan­i­ty that oth­ers see, or tran­scend­ing to a dif­fer­ent plane, and whether ele­vat­ed to a Blakean heav­en or engulfed in a hell of her own mak­ing. Either way, it is an arrest­ing close to a debut that grips from begin­ning to bit­ter end.