Saint Maud (2020) Review: Written at time of UK release

It has been a brutal few weeks for cinema, to put it lightly. Frankly, it's been a brutal few years, encroaching on a brutal decade or two, all culminating in these brutal few weeks. Tenet's stateside bomb may make Warner Bros. wish they had a special agent they could send back through time to halt its release, but alas. Nolan's sci-fi riff on Bond has meant that the ultimate British special agent has gone off-grid until 2021, leaving cinemas in literal shutdown levels of turmoil. What a treat, then, in amongst all the chaos to be provided with a diabolical triumph like Saint Maud. Throughout its runtime (clocking in at a brisk 85-minutes, cause for celebration itself) I was able to forget entirely about the precarious knife edge the cinematic experience is dangling on, to forget about the rampant disease sending the world into a seemingly unending downward spiral (a solitary cough from a fellow cinema goer across the room tugged me briefly back to reality, but I was soon re-engrossed), to forget, basically, about all the shit and instead focus on an absolute corker of a debut feature.

Writer/Director Rose Glass would not have envisioned her debut project being released into this world, though given the stewing evil bubbling underneath each frame of this precise, devilish psychological burner (slow-burner didn't feel apt with a runtime like that), perhaps even our hideous reality is a haven compared to the landscape of the titular Maud's mind. Fitting, then, that after a bleak teaser pre-titles, it is with bubbling that the film begins. A soup on the stove, simmering away in close up, letting us know precisely what we're in for. If the start of Saint Maud leaves you thinking you're watching a period piece, you're not alone. Maud, played to gut-wrenching perfection by rising starlet Morfydd Clark, lives a life far removed from most modern young women. She lives alone in a barren matchbox of a flat, although, of course, she's never really alone as Maud speaks to God every day, desperate and willing to do his bidding, initially through the physical nursing of Jennifer Ehle's Amanda, a former dancer and choreographer on her way to death's door, before Maud realises that there is a cause even nobler than cleansing a patient's body: cleansing their soul.

We are with Maud through the entirety of this quest, meaning the film lives and dies by the performance of its titular Saint, and Morfydd Clark near enough tears through the screen with a performance akin to a taut guitar string being wound ever closer to snap. She really is tremendous. As is Jennifer Ehle, whose sardonic looks and quips are neither straight malice nor vulnerability. She feels like she could be opened up if Maud could just find the right safe combination, but until then she will watch on, smirking. The story is straightforward in terms of its plot, but Glass and her cast wring every ounce of feeling from each scene, a frailty dangling menacingly over all we see. There are some traditional horror nods (having gone into the film cold but seen the trailer later, I would recommend avoiding it if you can) and as we move closer to an agonising ending, don't be surprised to find your fingers slipping higher and higher on your face, wishing to cover those eyes from whatever Maud's vision of God's splendour may turn out to be.

Saint Maud is a terrifying portrait of a young woman who's isolation and loneliness push her to strive for meaning in the unhealthiest of ways. Whatever transpired in Glass' life that she found this story within her, she has made good on her heroine's driving mantra and turned it into something vital, because as Maud says: "Never waste your pain."