A visionary and celebrated retired dancer is in the terminal phase of a severe lymphoma that has been diagnosed. A hospice nurse is assigned to accompany her, a devout Christian who turned to religion with fervor after a traumatic event with a patient. Her intentions, yes, are more complex than she seems, and the relationship between caregiver and patient is going to have intense tensions full of nuances.
The convalescent liberal and atheist becomes an obsession for the prudish nurse, who keeps a strange and ambiguous relationship with God to whom he feels close in a special way. Or so it seems. Looks are something Rose Glass subverts and twists as much as possible in her dazzling debut feature psychological horror ‘Saint Maud’.
Burning in body and soul
The film has recently been added to the Amazon Prime Video catalog, and it is an ideal opportunity to be impressed by one of the most challenging and special horror films of recent years. Also an opportunity to dismantle prejudices for all those who only know Morfydd Clark as Galadriel from ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ and take her for a talentless actress.
Glass employs every element at his disposal to develop a film where care and religion maintain a tricky relationship taken to the extreme. It’s not that it has infinite resources at its disposal, it’s a small film, but in less than an hour and a half it manages to tell more than many who believe large amounts of footage are needed to develop a story. It does so by leaving no dead space and without resorting to grossly obvious exposition.
That the history of nursing and care have been so strongly linked to religion is something that the director and screenwriter uses with great cunning in a subversive way to denounce the repression of the latter. The relationship between these two women of opposite beliefs is told from the caretaker’s obsession, who goes too far thinking that he should also take care of the straying soul without seeing that he is not dealing with the patient. The connection between them is perverse, but so is Clark’s character’s connection to the divine figure she reveres.
‘Saint Maud’: Catholic terror and possessions
‘Saint Maud’, perhaps forced by resources, is anchored in psychological terror and remains ambiguous about a possible supernatural element. However, she takes a lot from the cinema of possessions to give a twist to the aforementioned relationships. The development through script and suggestive images show great sophistication and clarity of ideas that are not very typical of someone in their first feature film.
As icing on the cake, it has an ending that even those who are less into the story can only call it amazing and impressive. Not only because of shocking images, but because of how he ends up closing really powerful ideas about self-blame and the repression of natural impulses. Clark leaves one of those performances to rememberdefending all the edges of a difficult character and making his story leave you petrified with astonishment.
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