"My little saviour."
— Amanda Köhl
Saint Maud is a 2019 British psychological horror film written and directed by Rose Glass, and starring Morfydd Clark. The film marks the directorial debut of Glass after a series of shorts and music videos.
Maud (Clark) is a young woman who has recently converted to Roman Catholicism and is a private carer for the terminally ill. She becomes convinced that the soul of her latest patient, lymphoma-stricken former dancer Amanda Köhl (Jennifer Ehle), needs saving, and becomes fixated on being the very person to save it. However, her past and darker, unseen forces pose a great threat to her mission.
After premiering at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival in September of that year, the film's originally scheduled releases in the following yearnote were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It eventually received a UK release on October 9, 2020, followed by a limited theatrical release in the US beginning January 29, 2021, and a simultaneous release on VOD platforms and pay television network MGM+ on February 12. It was later made available on Hulu, Prime Video and later Paramount+ as a result of their respective agreements with MGM+note .
Saint Maud contains examples of:
- An Aesop:
- Attempting to 'save' an unwilling person's soul for selfish, ego-serving reasons only results in destruction and death.
- Religion is a valid coping mechanism for trauma, but it should by no means be the only one you have - by isolating herself from others, Maud was ultimately left with no way to deal with her darker thoughts, sending her down a spiral of religious delusion.
- Agony of the Feet: Maud puts nails in pictures of Jesus she had cut out from the book and slips them into her shoes, screaming in pain as she stands on them after tying up her shoes. There is an audible squelching when she walks on them in the next scene.
- The Alcoholic: Amanda, more than likely to deal with the pain of her cancer. Maud takes to emptying bottles of booze as part of her soul-saving mission.
- Ambiguously Gay: It's left uncertain if Maud has any sexual interest in other women or not, as she's seen voyeuristically watching Amanda and Carol have sex and doesn't immediately rebuff Amanda's advances. While Maud is seen having sexual encounters with men, they're portrayed as unpleasant for her and she shows a distinct lack of interest during the act.
- Animal Motif: Maud sees a cockroach crawling on the ceiling after she accidentally kills a patient and one is shown crawling around her apartment. God begins to speak to Maud after the cockroach crawls towards the shrine on her desk, implying that God was the cockroach.
- Attention Whore: When Maud is about to immolate herself, she waits for others to notice and gather around. It could be argued all her actions throughout the film were in some way fueled by wanting to be noticed.
- Bilingual Bonus: God speaks to Maud in Welsh.
- Bisexual Love Triangle: A weird example —— while still working for Amanda, it seems that Maud is attracted to her, going so far as to spy on her and Carol having sex, and both Amanda and Carol repeatedly accuse Maud of being jealous. However, Maud definitely feels that Amanda is threatening her spiritual connection to God, which Maud repeatedly personifies as a man (including hearing His voice). She even goes so far as to repeatedly reassure God that she knows He's why she's there. So Maud is divided between Amanda and...God.
- Break the Haughty: Uptight, pious Maud has this happen to her over the course of the film via a number of upsetting events. By the end she's completely lost it, murdering Amanda under the belief that she is Satan and setting herself on fire to "ascend to Heaven".
- Country Matters: Amanda's last nurse describes Amanda as "a bit of a cunt" upon meeting Maud.
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Starkly averted in the opening scene, as Maud (then Katie) accidentally collapsed the chest of a patient while trying to administer CPR.
- Crisis of Faith: Maud, at the midpoint of the film. She's fully committed by the end.
- Cutting Back to Reality: The ending, from Maud glowing, with outstretched wings, looking to the sky in grace as her onlookers kneel down to her, horrifically burned, screaming in agony — for a split second, no less.
- Cruel to Be Kind: Invoked. Maud thinks she's doing this when she forces Carol to stop seeing Amanda. It's clear to the audience that it is cruel, period.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Before her religious conversion, Maud (then Katie) was a nurse who failed to save the life of an old man; in attempting CPR, she accidentally caused the man's chest to cave in, crushing his organs and killing him on top of getting splattered with his blood. The aftermath is depicted in the opening scene (Maud huddled in a corner with bloodied hands, her patient lying dead on the other side of the room), and she later has a traumatic flashback to the moment while having sex.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Maud, which seems to be the primary source for her obsession with "saving" Amanda's soul.
- Devil, but No God: Possibly. Amanda (when possessed by or revealed to be the Devil) sneers at Maud for still believing in God and tells her that he doesn't exist.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Maud's reactions to God's presence are blatantly orgasmic.
- Doing In the Wizard: Most of (if not all) of the supernatural events in the film are heavily implied to be hallucinations and delusions on the part of Maud, who has gradually been falling victim to Sanity Slippage after accidentally killing her patient while trying to perform CPR.
- Downer Ending: After murdering Amanda, Maud calmly walks onto the beach and sets herself on fire. While the scene initially portrays a Bittersweet Ending for Maud as she appears to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence (at least in her mind), the final shot reveals she's actually in excruciating pain and dying horribly.
- Drone of Dread: The soundtrack largely consists of this. It grows louder during the more supernatural scenes.
- Egocentrically Religious: Maud, whose every conversation with God seems centered around what she wants, made obvious when things don't go her way like when she gets fired and almost instantly assumes God isn't there or mocking her when it was obviously her own actions.
- Ends with a Smile: Played with, and probably subverted. Maud is shown at first overcome, then slowly beaming with joy as she apparently ascends to heaven in a burst of light. But, just as the movie goes to credits, there's a split-second flash of the reality: Maud screaming in agony while she burns to death.
- Eye Motifs: There are plenty of close-ups of eyes.
- Fan Disservice: Maud gives a handjob to one male stranger and has sex with another, but neither are portrayed in a remotely sexy light, especially when the latter flips her over and continues without her consent.
- Foreshadowing: Fire is used as a motif for the film; Maud deliberately burns her hand, she is seen flicking a lighter on and off throughout the film, and several of the film's posters (1
,2) reinforce the image by showing Maud surrounded by fire, or with her red hair turning into fire. At the end of the film, she kills herself by self-immolation. - Hard-Drinking Party Girl:
- While Amanda can't go out anymore due to her illness, she throws wild parties in her house and drinks a lot. Maud does not approve.
- Maud used to be this. She briefly returns to it after being fired by Amanda.
- Hates Being Alone: Despite how quiet and shy Maud acts, she is clearly desperate for human connection. This is most painfully shown when she is in the bar and tries laughing along with the group at a table next to her despite not knowing them or what they're saying, clearly just hoping they'll invite her over. Amanda even calls her "the loneliest girl in the world".
- Homoerotic Subtext: Between Amanda and Maud. Amanda, canonically interested in women, tries flirting with Maud, calling her pretty, and seems to be trying to test the waters to see if Maud is interested. While the text of Maud's intentions for Amanda is that she wants to convert her and protect her health, the subtext seems to be that Maud is romantically interested in her, and that she’s using her duties to justify her closeness to Amanda. She seems intrigued when she watches Amanda and Carol together through the crack in the door, and her hostility towards Carol and insistence that Carol needs to leave Amanda alone reads more like she wants Amanda to herself. At the party scene, Amanda suggests that Maud is jealous.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Carol, Amanda's escort. Amanda pays her for sex but it's clear they're fond of each other, which makes Maud's attempts to shut her out even more appalling.
- Hypocrite: Maud, in every sense of the word. Her religious outlook drives her to try to "save" Amanda with no respect for what she truly values and loves, only causing pain to the woman she cares for, and her disdain for Amanda early on as "self-involved" is set against with the fact that Maud's motivations behind her faith and savior mission seem to be heavily narcissistic and performative, rather than genuinely selfless and invested in good (she welcomes the role of savior, and only self-immolates when she sees she has an audience).
- Insane Equals Violent: Maud, driven mad by her isolation and trauma, stabs Amanda to death and then burns herself alive in front of horrified onlookers.
- It's All About Me: Even when Maud believes God has sent her a mission to save Amanda's soul she sees it as something to bring her spiritual glory and purpose, rather than helping another human find salvation and peace.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Amanda might not be the nicest person in the world, but her pleading with Maud on her deathbed to put her faith in real people rather than God does have some truth to it: if Maud had had people in her life to share her thoughts and feelings with after the death of her patient, she likely would be in a much better place Mentally. Sadly, Maud is too far gone to take this to heart, and interprets this as Amanda attacking her faith rather than asking her to change.
- Jump Scare: Two of them near the end.
- The first occurs when Amanda, seemingly possessed by the Devil, suddenly lurches up and throws Maud across the room.
- The second occurs at the end, when a scene of Maud glowing and growing wings while a crowd kneels before her suddenly smash cuts to her screaming as she burns alive.
- Just Hit Him: Played with. Amanda, while seemingly possessed by the Devil, throws Maud violently across the room in a demonstration of Super-Strength. The ending reframes this as presumably being another one of Maud's violent hallucinations, as she is shown to be capable of extreme physical feats,
- Lipstick Lesbian: Both Amanda and Carol are lesbians of the more feminine variety. Could also possibly apply to Maud as well though it's left unclear if she's closeted or not.
- A Man Is Always Eager: Maud only has to meet eyes with a guy in a bar to jerk him off in a back room, and she goes home with a guy immediately after he spills his drink over her.
- Meaningful Rename: Maud's given first name is Katie. She changed it to Maud after her religious conversion.
- Never My Fault: Maud slaps Amanda and is naturally fired, but instead of realizing she was in the wrong, she immediately seems to blame God for her situation instead of her own anger. Even the "Devil" tells her, "Take some responsibility for your actions."
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Morfydd Clark's natural Welsh accent frequently comes out, most notably when Maud asks a woman (Amanda's new nurse) if she can sit on the same bench as her.
- Self-Immolation: Maud at the end of the film.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Maud has this in the Cold Open, covered in blood. Her hallucination during the sex scene reveals that she accidentally killed a patient attempting to give CPR.
- Twofer Token Minority: Carol is a black lesbian.
- Vomit Discretion Shot:
- Played straight when Amanda throws up after drinking too much.
- Averted when Maud projectile vomits after coming home from a night out.
- Wham Shot: The very last one of Maud burning alive.
