Director Walsh knows just how to balance the comedy and the pathos as she takes us through her subject's life and chronicles her unlikely emergence as an artist.
A great actor’s showcase, but little more than that.
Irish director Aisling Walsh smartly keeps the style as simple as Maudie’s childlike paintings, leaving Hawkins and Ethan Hawke (cast as Lewis’s taciturn, illiterate husband) room to explore the intricacies of their unlikely union.
The only fireworks here are of the indoor kind, but this sensitive, beautifully acted film lingers long after the final frame. And the Newfoundland locations are breathtaking.
Hawkins impresses as the Canadian outsider artist, but this true story jars when abuse is treated as romance.