Sally Hawkins captures the enduring spirit of painter Maud Lewis in the new trailer for the biopic, “Maudie.” Directed by Aisling Walsh, the film focuses on Lewis’ early life and her struggle to become one of Canada’s best-known folk artists. The biopic made its world premiere at the 2016 Telluride Film Festival before screening at several Canadian film festivals.
The trailer opens with the desperate artist taking a job as a live-in housemaid for gruff, local fish peddler, Everett Lewis, played by Ethan Hawke. “Do you want me here or don’t you,” Maud tells Everett, “‘Cause I’ll walk out right now.” It is here, in Everette’s dilapidated house, that the artist finds happiness and determines her unlikely path to success as a painter.
Crippled from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at an early age, the artist is best-known for her simple, outdoor paintings – in truth, they are anything but. As the trailer shows, her characteristically small paintings barely contain the strength she summoned to paint them. “Did you paint that happy little chicken,” Sandra says in her affected East Coast accent before offering to buy one of her paintings. In the end, it is not her disability that defines her, but rather her perseverance.
This is not the first collaboration between Hawkins and Walsh. The two worked together in the BBC miniseries adaptation of Sarah Waters’ “Fingersmith,” which was helmed by Walsh.
“Maudie” opens in select theaters in Canada on April 14th and in the United States on June 16th.