Critics reviews

Everett was both emotionally and physically violent towards his diminutive partner. The film doesn't shy from that fact – nor should it. However, by taking an approach to this aspect of Maud's life that is as guileless and simplistic as her drawings, by trying to smooth the splinters and rebrand the couple's marriage as a great romance, Walsh's film feels jarringly at odds with contemporary sensibilities. A bully is a bully, no matter how cheerfully he is painted.

These canvases containing picturesque landscape scenes, brightly coloured flowers and sickeningly cute animals speak of a woman who sees beauty and vibrancy in the most dismal of circumstances, and Hawkins channels this idea of an artist who stubbornly looks for the best in a situation while very much accepting the grim realities.

From the beginning, Hawkins invests Maud with a naughty, rebellious streak and a quizzical, instinctive wiliness. Her smile is as broad as Mona Lisa's is thin, but it's just as rich and ambiguous... Walsh shapes Hawkins and Hawke's interplay so that the film registers as a bizarre-couple love story. Their romance attains its awkward balance when Maud maneuvers Ev into installing a screen door. These actors conjure a deep nonverbal bond that defies explanation.

[Screenwriter Sherry] White and director Aisling Walsh refuse to soft-peddle the husband's chauvinism or insensitivity, and because of this, his transformation into a loving, supportive husband seems as hard-won as his wife's success in the art world. The setting, emotionally wounded characters, and sensitivity to small-town dynamics all reminded me of Jean Negulesco's classic Johnny Belinda (1948).

Over the past few years, the stellar British-born actress Sally Hawkins has been working steadily, but it's been quite a while since she's gotten a role that allowed her to steer a whole movie the way her critical-breakthrough lead in Mike Leigh's 2008 "Happy Go Lucky" did. With "Maudie," she has that and more.

One of those movies that triumph over their worst instincts (and your well-honed doubts). There's a lot to get past, including an opener that engages in some generic place-setting, and a pushy score that insistently tries to lighten the darker moods. But stick with the movie for its leads, Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke, a beautifully matched pair who open up two closed people, unleashing torrents of feeling.

It's a little too smart to turn Lewis' life into a feel-good sapfest, but once the years and decades start ticking by unacknowledged, the well-developed and subtle characterizations established by Hawkins and Hawke disappear into a cloud of aging makeup and incident..

Hit-or-miss, but you'll probably bawl anyway. Its creators have elected to dramatize nothing but the things that traditional narrative features usually botch. The film, directed by Aisling Walsh, surveys the life of a beloved artist, Nova Scotia's self-taught folk painter Maud Lewis, who produced scores of cheerily primitive — and marvelously composed — studies of her world, despite the pain she suffered whenever she held a brush.

Hawkins translates Maud's distillation of the scenes outside her window with a sense of immediacy. It does Maud's quiet passion some justice but can't hold up a portrait that seems faded by comparison.

The kind of biopic that hits a nerve and then has you crying throughout the rest of the film. Even in scenes that run slightly contrived, Hawkins' presence and portrayal of this strange, warm, funny little woman is almost too much to handle... I don't think I've ever cried so hard at TIFF before, so thank you Ms. Hawkins, for that breathtaking performance.