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***
Dir: Aisling Walsh (12A, 115 mins)
Sally Hawkins shines in this biopic of Canadian artist Maud Lewis, whose childlike naive paintings became a sensation in the 1940s and 50s, and eventually would hang in the White House in the 70s. Crippled with arthritis, painting was never easy for her and her early life was harsh, until she started working for confirmed bachelor Everett Lewis, played gruffly by Ethan Hawke. Their prickly relationship turns to love, they swiftly marry and with her husband encourages her to paint. Seen by Kari Matchett’s New York businesswoman her paintings are appreciated as art, although Maud would never be rich in her lifetime. People would nevertheless flock to her tiny illustrated house in Nova Scotia to buy her paintings. Hawkins captures her joie de vivre, the joy the painting brought her with aplomb but the rest of the film is a little pedestrian compared to the depth Hawkins brings to this arthritic, small woman. A diverting, if not entirely beguiling biopic.
Opens Aug 4