Maudie is a biopic of the folk artist Maud Lewis (1903–70) who is, apparently, beloved in Canada, and while Sally Hawkins is superb in the title role, and she will win you over (eventually), you do have to buy it as ‘a beautiful love story’. I bought it, hook, line and sinker — such a beautiful love story! — but then I read up on Maud (damn the internet) and had to significantly unbuy it. Does it matter that it may not be ‘the truth’? Or that a woman who was, in fact, severely disabled is presented mostly as someone with a slight hobble? I don’t know, frankly. But I am certainly putting it out there.
Set in and around Digby, the small Nova Scotia community where the artist lived all her life, it opens with Maud in her early thirties, when she’s homeless, in effect.
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