Among the very few things that Christianity and horror have in common is that both are built on the crushed bones of women. Christianity, with its insistence on women’s bodies as the site of both the miracle of birth and original sin, relies on the subjugation of women, envisioning all its holiest figures as male and heterosexual. The female body is both holy and unholy, the source of both salvation and damnation.
Horror, on the other hand, has long made art out of the physical and psychological vivisection of women. Throwing the supposed sanctity of women’s bodies out in favour of the spectacle of their suffering.
Both are well aware of the contradictions at play, and embrace them even – in writer-director Rose Glass’ feature debut. However, the two worlds crash together, and all their contradictions are laid bare, with devastating consequences.
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Saint Maud follows the eponymous Maud (Morfydd Clark), a palliative care nurse whose work-related trauma leads her to Christianity. To call her devout would be an understatement – Maud defines herself entirely by her faith, erasing any parts of herself that do not conform to her saintly image. And she even styles herself after the female martyrs of centuries past.
Her counterpart is her patient, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a dancer diagnosed with stage four spinal lymphoma, an illness that is likely to kill her. In what looks like Amanda’s final months, the dancer retreats into a sort of hedonism, indulging herself with sex and alcohol, and watching recordings of her own performances.
That is, of course, until Maud comes along, determined to use Amanda’s final days to convert her to a less sinful lifestyle. Amanda, bored and lonely, takes an odd interest in Maud and her faith, with Ehle’s subtle performance never quite giving away just how much or how little Amanda actually cares for her nurse.
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In Amanda and Maud, Glass fashions two binary opposites of womanhood. Maud, with her condescending virtue, is a composite of female Christian martyrs, with Glass’ script adopting traits from across history. Blandina, who stayed true to her faith even in the face of unspeakable tortures; Perpetua, and her visions; even Joan of Arc gets a few references in the form of Maud’s ascetic lifestyle choices and the mysterious illnesses that arise most likely as a result of those choices.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Amanda embodies the sensual, the indulgent, and everything Maud tries so hard to avoid. There are elements of each in the other – Maud both relapses into a joyless debauchery and enjoys some kind of sexual ecstasy when “communing” with God. While Amanda does occasionally seem sincere in her interest in Maud’s faith and also uses her body as a platform for her beliefs, albeit in a far different way to Maud.
Glass constructs the dynamic in such a way that the pair cannot exist without each other. With Maud’s unravelling beginning in earnest upon her separation from Amanda, and Amanda is quickly relegated to the sidelines, a morbid foreshadowing of what may await her after death.
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Their codependence offers a disturbing mirror of Christianity – consider, for example, the relationship between sin and forgiveness: one cannot exist without the other. The saviour needs the sinner, and vice versa.
Horror and religion have long made spectacle of women’s suffering, and in Saint Maud, Rose Glass complicates the notion. Asking her audience what it means when a woman takes control of those narratives, causing her own aestheticised pain, and revelling in the ecstasy of it.
Maud lives by the philosophy of “Never waste your pain”, taking an empowered stance over her own body and considering her pain as something that has purpose. Amanda’s pain on the other hand, an involuntary experience, is entirely wasted, leading to nothing more than her imminent death.
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Maud continues her emulation of the female martyrs. And Glass leans more into the duality of the experience, the double-bind that the most pious of women were caught in, forced to allow their body to be where they demonstrated their faith.
Without spoiling the film’s incredible ending, Glass interrogates this notion right to its end. Asking whether both the horror film she is constructing or the religion it bases itself around will ever allow women to be venerated on their own, excruciating terms, or if society will simply sit back and admire the spectacle of a woman’s self-destruction.