Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke give stunning performances in the movie Maudie, a fictionalized account of the life of artist Maud Lewis. True eccentrics, Maud and Hawke’s Everett forge an unlikely coupling when he, the local fish peddler in Nova Scotia, advertises for a housekeeper and Maud, arthritic, limps over. She’s escaping her family: a rigid aunt and dreadful brother, and doesn’t mind the scandal of living with the odd and sometimes abusive Everett just to be free. As housekeeper she’s drawn to beautifying, and taking a brush she paints everything in sight, adding butterflies to drab walls, flowers to furnishings. By the film’s end, no space in the minute house is left unadorned. These characters are deeply affecting. And it is not just the superb acting. Sally Hawkins is to Maud as Eddie Redmayne was to Stephen Hawking, a tour de force of physicality. After a special screening this week, at a party at the American Folk Art Museum, Ethan Hawke deflected attention from the excellence of his own performance: “Sally just goes through the roof,” he said, still awed.

Maudie’s British director, Aisling Walsh, said the house remains intact, inside a museum in Halifax. Wearing cameo photographs of her grandmother and Frida Kahlo for inspiration, Walsh explained how the design team crafted the small house, taking the dimensions and recreating it just as it was, on location in Newfoundland, she said. And then, looking around at the American Folk Art Museum she said, “They ought to have an exhibit of her work right here.”

Brett Haley loves Sam Elliott. He cast him as a retiree, a fine suitor for Blythe Danner in his previous movie, I’ll See You in my Dreams. In The Hero, he’s an ageing actor, and he has cancer. Pensive and sad, pot smoking with a reserve of vigor, he’s got some moves, and mojo aided by a young comedienne named Charlotte (Laura Prepon from Orange is the New Black). Haley has a clever niche, exploring characters in the prime of old age, perfect for baby boomers now facing end of life issues. And, now I’m in love with Sam Elliott too.

Regina Weinreich

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