Other Media Review

Guest Movie Review: Maudie

NB: Sometimes you just need to work out your frustrations with writing an F-grade, and Rhode Red did just that!

Not to be confused with RedHeadedGirl in Boston, Rhode is a redheaded feminist in Providence. She works in business (aka trade) publishing by day, reads romances and SFF by night, buys more art than her house can hold and grows vast quantities of flowers.

“I’ve tried not to keep this film in my mind, and indeed wrote this review to help excise it, but fear it will haunt me for a while longer because some of the themes were too close to universal for comfort.”

Maud Lewis one of Canada’s best known folk artists (1903-1970). According to Wikipedia, her husband John Lewis bought her her first set of oil paints, encouraged her to paint and then did all the housework so she could spend her time painting. As her fame spread, she sold paintings to such notables as Richard Nixon. She accomplished all of this while living in a tiny shack in Nova Scotia and suffering from the results of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

Sounds like a fantastic person for a biopic, right?

Apparently inspired by the supportive husband theme, screenwriter Sherry White turned it into a ‘romantic biography’, female director Aisling Walsh came on board and Ethan Hawke agreed to play husband to Sally Hawkins as Maud.

The film debuted in 2016 has a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is currently touring art houses in the US including a theatre down the street from me. So I popped over…only to emerge two hours later shuddering.

It took a week to write this review in large part because the film was so horrifying I couldn’t stand to think about it at first.

First of all – trigger warnings like crazy: the film includes physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, attempted non consensual sex, sexism and misogyny. Plus, Ethan Hawke doing his damnest to act like an emotionally constipated, illiterate jerk in smelly old clothing the entire time.

Probably because they landed such a big co-star, the husband’s role was expanded from the original script. At least I hope so. Aside from a brief opening when we see Maud being treated miserably by her birth family (which sets up the premise of why a gently-bred woman would leave home in the 1930s to marry a poor fishmonger), the story largely revolves around the husband.

Can you imagine a biopic of a male artist where the story revolves around his wife? Nope, didn’t think so.

First we see the couple’s courtship. The power is entirely on his side. She is tiny, disabled, and penniless, with nowhere to go and no marketable skills. He is built like a bear, he owns a small house, and he makes a living from several jobs including selling fish door to door. He has advertised for a housekeeper. She begs him for the job. He refuses her. Three times.

Each time he kicks her out of his miserable shack. She cheerfully, indomitably comes back and back. Finally he allows her to stay but verbally abuses her housework continually, including telling her she is lower than the dogs and the chickens. When a friend of his drops by and she comes outside hoping for a cheery word, he belts her so hard across the face that she falls and the (male) friend gasps in horror – as did all the people in the theatre around me.

She pulls herself up and tries to smile shakily. “It’s alright.”

At night, he makes no provision for her. She is forced to sleep beside him in his bed, as there’s nowhere else. She is pleasant, because somehow, “It’s alright.”

I’m sure you can guess what happens a few nights into this arrangement. No, there’s zero courting, foreplay, conversation or consent (theatre patrons around me were gasping in horror again.) At the very last moment Maud manages to put him off by revealing a dreadful and deeply personal secret.

Show Spoiler
She had gotten pregnant out of wedlock in the past and the baby, born with severe birth defects, had nearly instantly died.

She then asks him to marry her. Repeatedly. He continues to be verbally abusive and deeply unpleasant. She must stand waiting while he eats. She must walk behind him on the long road to town. Finally he agrees – apparently from sexual necessity.

The sex when it finally happens is the drab “roll on, roll off with your nightclothes still on” variety.

Apparently bored in her pitiful life in an isolated shack, Maud pulls the cover off a paint can and starts painting small things about the house. Her grumpy husband is not enthused. She then uses her own money to buy paints. He’s still not enthused, telling her to leave the wall around his chair paint-free.

Finally after receiving her first positive feedback from a woman summer visitor from New York City, Maud begins to sell hand painted postcards at the local store. Her husband pockets all the money.

Now we see her painting more and more, finally setting up a ‘paintings for sale’ sign in the street outside the shack. The marriage appears to be doing ever so slightly better – this is indicated when instead of walking behind her husband’s fishcart, she sits in it and he pushes her along. (Note: this is less an act of love than just humanitarian as she has trouble walking and weighs about as much as a thimble.)

Emboldened, at last she turns to him and says defiantly that she is better than the dogs and the chickens. He doesn’t reply, but does silently make her a screen door to help keep dust off her paintings.

Finally she starts getting famous. Newspaper publish articles, and her husband wants her to read out where they mention him. A TV news crew shows up, and her husband is worried about how he appears on screen. American VP Richard Nixon’s office writes to order a painting, and her husband worries what that success of hers might mean to him. Because everything is about him.

We see a few quick spots of him doing minimal housekeeping. (These are so brief I didn’t actually understand he did all of it until I researched later.)

Then we have a quick interlude in which her husband does something improbable in order to show the film audience that he loves her at last.

Show Spoiler
In the film, although illiterate, he researches where her daughter, long thought to be a malformed dead baby, is living alive, perfectly formed and healthy. He then takes Maud to peep secretly at her in a scene which is laughingly bad — the daughter, now an adult, walks outside and sits down on her front house steps for no apparent reason, while somehow not noticing a strange truck parked a few feet away on her otherwise utterly empty street.

In the film’s final scenes, Maud’s arthritis makes painting hard, but she continues for the sheer love of it until she is stricken by illness and dies. We then see her husband – because after all the film is more about his emotional arc than her life – finally realize how much he loves her and how he’ll miss her.

At that, the audience all around me sighed happily. Then as the credits rolled they walked in cheerfully out. They had learned the film’s ‘romantic’ message – no matter how talented you are, it’s all about the man. No matter how dreadfully he treats you, if you keep smiling and being nice in return, someday he will realize his love for you. And that’s the big win.

By the way, sadly, according to a new biography, even this dire ‘romance’ was too positive a spin. Apparently Maud’s husband never provided that screen door. He never found her daughter – the daughter herself approached Maud directly (only to be rebuffed.) Lastly, instead of painting through her pain for the love of art, it’s likely Maud painted because her husband forced her to do two paintings per day although they lived in penury while he hoarded the cash.

As her newest biographer notes, it’s doubtful Maud’s husband loved her at all.

My conclusion? Why fictionalize a dark story like this only part way? The message that a woman is a good woman worthy of a film because she cheerfully put up with abuse — that’s awfully damaging. I would have either wanted a film with the truth and damn the ‘romance’, or a wholecloth romantic invention lightly ‘inspired’ by her story.

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  1. Zyva says:


    He continues to be verbally abusive and deeply unpleasant. She must stand waiting while he eats. She must walk behind him on the long road to town.

    [TW] the film includes physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, attempted non consensual sex, sexism and misogyny.

    OMG coercive control . Textbook case.

  2. Kera says:

    Thank you for warning us about this train wreck. My blood is boiling just reading this.

    Not so much about the abuse itself. If that was a real part of her life, it should totally be in the movie, but giving it a romantic spin toward the end, and how the audience reacted to it just makes me livid. And sad. And frustrated.

    Why do we still tell women that being deserving of love is directly proportional to how much abuse we can take? This is sickening.

  3. Lora says:

    OH my lord. I am so glad you warned me. I adore Sally Hawkins (Persuasion? Fingersmith? Yes please! Even Paddington Bear ffs, but not this!). AACK!

  4. Ren Benton says:

    No matter how dreadfully he treats you, if you keep smiling and being nice in return, someday he will realize his love for you.

    When you’re dead and your money dries up. *swoon*

  5. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    I see somewhat of a correlation between this film and “Big Eyes” from a few years ago. “Big Eyes” is an account of Margaret Keene, who painted big-eyed waifs (they were tremendously popular when I was young–I remember in the early 1970s having a diary with a “big-eyes” on the cover), while her husband took all the credit and all the money. I don’t think “Big Eyes” is as forgiving toward the husband as “Maudie” is, so perhaps it can be used as a palate cleanser. Although both films undoubtedly show abusive men exploiting their far-more-talented wives.

  6. Another Kate says:

    Nova Scotian here (or at least I was until a week ago – I still have a Nova Scotia license plate on my car!).

    This film played to almost universal acclaim in Nova Scotia as Maud Lewis is THE most famous local artist. The biggest local criticism of the film is that it was filmed in Newfoundland rather than Nova Scotia so the look of it doesn’t fit the story. It is well known how abusive her husband was. There is a full-sized replica of her cabin in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and her real cabin is a tourist destination.

    I chose not to see the film for two reasons:
    1) I don’t like her art (silly reason, I know!)
    2) I know that she led a depressing life and then she died; and I don’t feel the need to watch a movie about that. I once read a novel based on her life and it was one of the dreariest things I have ever read – I don’t want to repeat the experience with a film.

    You have now given me a third (and even better) reason for not watching it!

  7. Alice in Nova Scotia says:

    Thanks for this honest review! As a native Nova Scotian, I’ve known about Maude Lewis my whole life. Whether you love folk art or not, her story & art is an amazing testament to her spirit and strength through pain and adversity. I did not see the movie, as I could never abide watching the abuse of someone who was physically challenged and with so little hope of escaping it! While we cannot do anything about her life, except acclaim her paintings, it’s a shame the screenwriter and/or director felt the need to make the abusive husband the focal point and make up events that did not happen in order to make him more palatable!!

  8. Maddy in MA says:

    OMG, F,F, F-itty F indeed! Thanks for the warning, yikes! :-E

  9. Thank you for this, I saw the preview and felt rather repelled, and now I don’t need to wonder why, and you’ve saved me two hours and at least some dollars.

  10. Heather says:

    Thank you for saving me from seeing this movie! I was planning to see it, but your description makes it clear that it would have left me full of pent-up rage.

  11. Liv Rancourt says:

    It truly is a testament to society’s internalized misogyny that such a film could receive “near-universal acclaim”.

  12. Gail says:

    I’ve not seen the movie & have no plan to. Just UGH! That being said it disappoints me that so many talented women would turn their efforts toward such a misogynistic project with such a “gloss-over” attitude.

  13. Teev says:

    This is the romantic Sally Hawkins movie I want to see:

  14. Rose says:

    @Teev came here to say the same thing. Save your money and go see Shape of Water instead.

  15. Jennifer says:

    I thought this looked bad but I had no idea it was THIS bad. Jeebus.

  16. Megan M. says:

    Whoa! I hadn’t heard of this movie (no cable, so I don’t see a lot of movie trailers anymore) or the real-life artist, but I am completely and utterly horrified reading about this film and its reception! WTF? I don’t even know what else to say.

  17. greennily says:

    Thanks for the warning. I thought about seeing that but now… And 90% approval on Rotten Tomatoes… It’s like movie critics and feminists live in different realities…

  18. chacha1 says:

    My gods. I would not have seen this movie anyway, just based on the “disabled artist is abused and lives in poverty” depressingness, but it sure sounds as if the woman who wrote the Lady Macbeth movie (reviewed next) should have written this.

  19. LML says:

    I would like to see this review reach readers and movie viewers beyond SBTB.

  20. Karin says:

    It sounds absolutely horrible. What a shame because Sally Hawkins is a delightful actress, in the right movie. I loved her “Happy Go Lucky”. And you say it had a female director? smdh

  21. Kat says:

    My family is going on a pilgrimage to see Maud’s art & home this summer & I have to go. But after watching this film & reading more about her, I am so upset for her & her life.

    My mom sees this as a wonderful love story & I am horrified. 100’s of internet comments talk about their quirky, beautiful relationship and I’m kind of in shock. Did we see the same movie???

    Trying to figure out how to best honor Maude while in Nova Scotia. Any ideas?

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