Title: Shiva BabyYear: 2020Country: USA, CanadaLanguage: EnglishGenre: ComedyDirector/Screenwriter: Emma SeligmanMusic: Ariel MarxCinematography: Maria RuscheEditing: Hanna A. ParkCast:Rachel SennottMolly GordonPolly DraperDanny DeferrariFred MelamedDianna AgronGlynis BellJackie HoffmanVivien LandauSondra JamesCilda ShaurRating: 7.5/10
Title: Saint MaudYear: 2019Country: UKLanguage: English, WelshGenre: Drama, Horror, MysteryDirector/Screenwriter: Rose GlassMusic: Adam Janota BzowskiCinematography: Ben FordesmanEditing: Mark TownsCast:Morfydd ClarkJennifer EhleLily KnightLily FrazerMarcus HuttonTurlough ConveryRosie SansomRating: 6.7/10
It’s debut feature assessment time! Two aspiring female filmmakers delight and impress us in rather different ways. Emma Seligman’s SHIVA BABY, a US-Canada production extended from her eponymous short, is a faux-spontaneous, concise film that whirls around almost in real-time, it runs only 77 minutes but what a whirlpool of anxiety-ridden quagmire it is! SAINT MAUD is a British psychological horror about a Catholic zealot consumed by her savior complex, first-time director Rose Glass stylishly flexes her muscles of genre-moviemaking and it features a blue-ribbon performance from Morfydd Clark.
In SHIVA BABY, American Jewish college girl Danielle (Sennott) attends a shiva with her parents. There she touches base with her ex-girlfriend Maya (Gordon) and bumps into Max (Deferrari), who is the last person in this world she wants to see under the circumstances, one of her clients since on the sly, Danielle moonlights as a fille de joie to earn some quick cash, which her clueless parents think she earns from baby-sitting.
Actually, a sitter is gravely needed when Max’s Gentile wife Kim (Agron) brings their bawling bundle of joy to the shiva, Danielle’s secret is at risk when telltale signs are observed by Kim, her naive act of sexual autonomy backfires and it is Maya who twigs her side hustle, a falling-out dampens their renewed passion. Beset by family friends’ gossipy inquiry, a hot-and-bothered Danielle is desperate to leave, when measured small talk becomes exceedingly awkward, only a cup of lukewarm coffee can offer her a breather, and the family’s egress is another scrape where everybody is squeezed out of their comfort zone but Seligman also celebrates the girls’ solidarity whereas their older generation is predisposed to pass judgement.
Sennott bestirs herself particularly well, her Danielle seems perpetually teetering on the brink of cracking up, but like many people of her age, Danielle’s irritable facade is her go-to defense mechanism, underneath that, her insecurity, vulnerability and strength are all in nascent form needs to be seen and nurtured.
SHIVA BABY is a quirkily energized, even frenetic (when Danielle’s anxiety level surges, her vision of reality is also pertinently warped and roasted, on the strength of Seligman’s showy technique and composer Ariel Marx’s eerie string klezmer) practice of mapping out a Jewish girl’s bisexuality (without making a fuss over it) and inquietude caused by the constraint of a suffocating family tie (the overbearing Jewish mother/the insensitively amicable Jewish father tropes are worn-out), and if you suffer from social anxiety disorder, the film’s relatability is spot-on.
Across the pond, SAINT MAUD goes to extremes in a full possession mode, nurse Katie (Clark), converting to Catholicism after a botched attempt to save her patient (but the particulars are in omission), now calls herself Maud, she is assigned a palliative care service to the dancer/choreographer Amanda (Ehle), who is diagnosed with stage four lymphoma and wheel-chair bound. Trying to right her previous unspecified wrongs, Maud imagines hearing the Almighty’s calling and burdens herself to rescue Amanda’s decadent soul (a lesbian hedonist). Once she oversteps the mark, rejection, humiliation and dejection assail her in quick succession. Heading towards the event horizon, an obsessive Maud consummates her undeterred conviction in a most radical ritual, but the final image right before the end is a dead giveaway of her benightedness.
Glass resoundingly assaults our sensorium with sinisterly somber and disturbing imagery. Maud’s ascetic, sepulchral apartment (the peculiarly rotated position) seems to exist in the purgatory itself. Projectile vomiting, levitation and other surreal elements (William Blake’s full-color plates are distorted and reified to addle Maud’s vestige of sanity) are rendered in frugal but effective special effects. On the technical front, SAINT MAUD is a marvel to knock audience dead.
But, there is always a “but”, Glass’s foregrounding of Maud’s fundamentalistic monomania does not add anything particularly insightful to the centuries-old thematics. She pulls punches from burrowing into the grounds behind Maud’s nerve-wracking masochism (nails in the shoes), the fount of her delusion and hallucination, and lumps them to Maud’s blind faith. A recent convert, Maud doesn’t seek religion with an open heart, she is desirous of something to expiate her sins (but what are her sins?), and her transmogrification from Katie to Maud is a big lacuna here (yes, it is noticeable that Maud’s eyes have two different colors), ergo, Glass clearly chooses to sensationalize what is more visually compelling to strut her stuff.
That said, Clark is utterly sensational. She enriches Maud’s idée fixe with painstaking application both physically and mentally. It is totally up to Clark to humanize Maud’s creepiness, misery and desperation (as the script has no sympathy but pity for her), and she makes a hellacious effort to cinch that. Maud is a mentally impaired patient for whom no one cares. Meantime, a gracious (even under ghastly make-up with a bold head) Ehle also maxes out to humanize Amanda, even if her is a mixed-bag of badly conceived stereotypes. She is spitefully introduced with a c-word, which leads one wonder where is our basic compassion towards the terminally ill? Alas, SAINT MAUD has that crassness which is an ill-sorted bedfellow with its high-concept ideas and Glass’s impressive execution.
referential entries: Sebastián Lelio’s DISOBEDIENCE (2017, 7.2/10); Olivia Wilde’s BOOKSMART (2019, 6.8/10); Jonathan Glazer’s UNDER THE SKIN (2013, 8.2/10).
Cinema Omnivore 