Film review: Maudie is an impressive real-life drama featuring Oscar-worthy performances

Sally Hawkins as artist Maud Lewis and Ethan Hawke as Everett Lewis in the film Maudie, now showing as part of the Diff365 programme at Vox Cinemas Mall of the Emirates. Duncan Deyoung / Sony PicturesShow more

Maudie

Director: Aisling Walsh

Stars: Ethan Hawke, Sally Hawkins

Four stars

Maudie tells the real-life story of outsider artist Maud Lewis, who became one of the most popular Canadian painters of her era, despite a far-from-­traditional apprenticeship. It is the latest film to screen as part of the Vox Cinemas Diff365 programme.

Lewis, who suffered from ­juvenile arthritis from a young age – unconfirmed ­contemporary reports suggest she also had ­unspecified physical deformities from birth – is essentially abandoned by her family as a young woman after the death of her parents in the mid-1930s.

Her brother, Charles, sells the family home, keeping the ­proceeds for himself, and Maud, played by Sally Hawkins, is handed over to her Aunt Ida (Gabrielle Rose), in whose home she lives a Cinderella-like life of indentured servitude in an era when people with physical ­disabilities were ­treated as if mentally ill.

Despite her difficulties due to arthritis, not the least of which is holding a paint brush, Maud loves to paint – a hobby that infuriates her aunt, as do most things that don’t ­involve Maud carrying out household chores.

It is little surprise then that, given the opportunity to work as a live-in house keeper for cantankerous, reclusive, fish-seller Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke), Maud jumps at the chance – even though it means working for a pittance in Lewis’s tiny shack.

Thus begins one of the strangest romances you are likely to see on screen.

This pair are odder than the oddest of odd couples, though director Aisling Walsh never allows her portrayal of their idiosyncrasies to stray into mocking territory.

Everett can be a bully, obnoxious and, on occasion, violent and abusive, but indie veteran Hawke manages to elicit pity from the viewer rather than ­anger or disgust.

As Maud, Hawkins wisely underplays the ­disability – the artist’s difficulties are ­barely hinted at, with a stooped gait and unusual painting ­technique sufficient visual clues that she has her challenges.

The actress ­deftly creates a character that is frail yet grittily determined, childlike yet smart, as she helps to turn around the illiterate ­Lewis’s struggling business through the simple method of keeping records of sales.

Maud’s artistic skills also begin to develop when she moves in with Everett. His home is far from stately, but soon festooned with birds and flowers and ­fairies as Maud uses it as her personal canvas while he is out selling fish.

When sassy New Yorker ­Sandra (Kari Matchett) briefly passes through the pair’s isolated Nova Scotia hometown and spots Maud’s talent, her fame begins to spread and soon the tiny shack is surrounded by art lovers eager to get a piece of the next big thing.

There is, of course, a ­sentimental, feel-good element to the story, but since it is fairly accurate in its depiction of real events one should not be too critical of that fact.

Also, this is not a rags-to-­riches fairy tale – despite her critical acclaim, Maud and her husband remained in their tiny shack for the rest of their lives.

Director Walsh’s aesthetic deserves praise. Throughout the film, our protagonists are framed by sweeping vistas of rugged Canadian landscapes, which contrasts with the scenes of them hemmed in by their tiny, bleak (later colourful) shack. It is all befitting of a movie about a painter who has “the whole world framed right here” in her austere home.

That said, this is very much a film that rests on two stunning performances.

It’s going to take some special competition ­between now and December to keep Hawkins off next year’s ­Oscars shortlist, and don’t be surprised if Hawke is also in the mix.

• Maudie is at Vox Cinemas Mall of the Emirates from June 15