Revue Saint Maud – IGN

Loneliness can be a dangerous whirlwind. A slight tug of sadness causes an intense pain of isolation, sucking its victim into a vicious downward spiral that threatens to swallow them whole. This hellish experience is the unsettling journey explored in the cerebral yet carnal horror film Saint Maud.In her directorial feature debut, writer / director Rose Glass introduces audiences to the world of a pious young nurse called Maud ( a fascinating Morfydd Clark). On the surface she appears sweet and modest, a smiling twenty-year-old Christian woman who dresses conservatively and is dedicated to caring for the terminally ill in hospice home care. But from the first scene of the film, Glass warns us about Maud’s inner darkness.

Before this sweet-mannered young woman moves from her humble studio to the lavish home of Amanda (a fierce Jennifer Ehle), a famous choreographer who is nearing death, Maud is shown with blood on her hands, gaping of horror at a bloody. corpse draped in a hospital stretcher. Is it the future or the past? Threat or trauma? Sainte Maud likes to tease the answer by plunging us into the mind of her protagonist.

Although apparently shy, Maud has a rich inner life. She speaks to God throughout her day in a whispered voiceover. These are not just prayers. Maud gossips to God, criticizing the hedonistic indulgences of alcohol, cigarettes, vanity and lesbian sex that Amanda enjoys in her numbered days. Maud believes there is greater joy to be found in salvation. His relationship with God showed it. Although God is silent in their conversations, He sends surges of love that strike Maud like body-shaking orgasms, twisting her limbs in fits of pleasure and twisting her mouth and eyes in jarring distortions. But God is not his only love.

As she becomes captivated by Amanda’s smirks, salinity and sensuality, Maud fantasizes about saving the soul of this hedonist. Through this self-ordained mission, Maud briefly breaks free from her loneliness by appeasing her God and impressing Amanda. However, her fanaticism crosses a line that will push this wild-eyed woman down a dangerous path of revolt, revelation and reckless redemption.

The narrative glass scissors are etched with anxiety, heartache, and religious fervor. Each scene pulsates with a strange tension, as each one plunges us deeper into Maud’s state of mind. Flashbacks, dream sequences and voiceovers allow us to testify to his darkest secrets, his unspoken prayers and his repressed desires. Miserable sound design with metallic scrapes, watery echoes, and pressure moans to express the building emotions Maud dares not express.

This nightmarish soundscape swells, threatening to consume us as these dark moods threaten to consume her. Yet we are more than the audience of Maud’s melancholy and madness. We are ultimately her God, seeing it all as she turns to virtue, then vice, to desperately seize the comfort of love and connection. We are invited to judge his every move with a mixture of empathy and horror. Then we ask ourselves what all this says about humanity.