Maudie

Maud's life was constricted, but her gaze was expansive. And so is her movie.

An oddly affecting love story about burying the hurt and trudging forward in the face of pain and finding your own version of happiness.

"Maudie" is a work of art.

An unsentimental but emotional film for anyone who suspects in their heart of hearts that suffering really is the only thing that makes anyone worth a damn.

What shines through is the beauty of Guy Godfree's cinematography - the light has a lovely, soft stillness to it, like a painting - and a remarkable performance by Hawkins, whose impossibly wide smile seems to bring the sun.

While it's far from timeless drama, this wistful character study of a lonely woman and a lonely man who find each other in coastal Nova Scotia has a winning, twee charm.

In a performance that echoes her breakthrough role in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, Hawkins embraces this fiercely independent spirit, broken body and softly-spoken soul.

A lead performance alive with exquisite spirit and inspiration elevates Maudie, a selective biopic of famous Canadian 'outsider' artist Maud Lewis, well above what could have been a very sketchy outcome.

Although the material is slight, the humanity and its universality make it cinematic, if not entirely satisfying.

The story, the characters, and the place, there is beauty in each one, but they fail to conjoin.

With its plaintive score and bleak landscapes, it seems to unfold as slowly as a Nova Scotia winter, but it has one thunderously exciting asset in the performance of Sally Hawkins.