The movie “Maudie,” a fact-based drama about the late Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis and her strange relationship with her husband, is a charming tale — or as charming as a tale can be that involves a person as nearly unlovable as Everett Lewis.
As portrayed by Ethan Hawke, Everett makes the word “curmudgeon” seem wholly inadequate to describe his (initially) repellent nature. Marrying Maud in 1938 — several weeks after hiring her as his live-in housekeeper for 25 cents a week — this boorish, barely verbal fish-peddler expects his wife to know, and to keep, her place: As he puts it, oh so romantically, that place comes right after him, his two dogs and his chickens.
Maud, on the other hand, is a pure delight, supplying nearly all of this unprepossessing film biography’s quiet pleasures, many of which come every time actress Sally Hawkins, as the quirky, chain-smoking, severely arthritic title character, opens up her mouth to let out one of Maud’s signature, adorable little giggles.
The question of what she has to laugh about makes this film something of a mystery, as well as a most unorthodox love story. The life of Maud Lewis, nee Dowley, was a tough one. Born “funny,” as she puts it — and not the ha-ha kind — Maud was a tiny, hunched-over elf of a person when she went to work, at 34, for the man who would become her husband, cajoling Everett into letting her paint, as was her hobby, when she had finished her many chores.
