Maudie

The life of Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis (Sally Hawkins), who worked in obscure poverty, stooped and gnarled by childhood arthritis, until fame found her a few years before she died in 1970. Hawkins is the best reason to see this sluggish, pinched, claustrophobic little biopic; whenever it threatens to grow dreary, which it does often, the spunky light in her eyes draws us back. Otherwise the movie rings false; Sherry White’s script is uneven and unconvincing, Aisling Walsh’s direction plods as doggedly as Maud painting one of her pictures, and Ethan Hawke as Maud’s husband Everett is so foul-tempered and abusive that he makes Maud look like a dimwitted masochist—thus undercutting the movie’s message of two outcasts redeemed by love. Guy Godfree’s starkly beautiful cinematography is another plus. J.L.