★★☆☆☆
A difficult and highly mannered performance from Sally Hawkins coupled with a repugnant and profoundly unappealing character played by Ethan Hawke sink this curious, and curiously saccharine, biopic.
The Nova Scotia artist Maud Lewis (Hawkins) is the subject. She paints simplistic naturescapes, suffered from rheumatoid arthritis as a child, and speaks, in Hawkins’s bold characterisation, in a smiley, whispery squeak that’s somewhere between Björk and Tweety Pie’s Granny. Maud’s husband is a boorish tyrant called Everett (Hawke), who is relentlessly cruel, calls her a dog and smacks her in the mouth when she displeases him.
He stays cruel for most of the film. But she keeps smiling, and painting naturescapes in a bizarre and self-contradictory movie that seems to celebrate creativity and commitment even as it validates domestic abuse. Just odd.
12A, 116min