Saint Maud
A slow burn over Christian superstition. Burns it out to the ground, not even the ashes remain. It seems God speaks Welsh, a gentleman of ill repute.
Some born-again Christian nurse had a revelation when some patient under her case died under mysterious circumstances. Since she can’t serve the public anymore, she goes into private practice, in this case for palliative care of a minor celebrity, dying of cancer.
Said celebrity is her complete opposite (or maybe not?), a very hedonistic militant atheist. Her sexual life remains active, but she feels really lonely nonetheless. Out of pure desperation for bonding with another human, she plays along the existential dread of dying and befriends our protagonist.
This friendship is actually good for both, our protagonist is busy being helpful and avoids talking directly with god like some crazy person, and the lonely artiste fights off boredom. Alas, it cannot last, there is another friend who provides companionship and sex, that’s just strictly better.
Our protagonist is extremely conservative and reserved, but she (seemingly) convinces the girl friend to leave the boss alone, as she needs to focus on her impending death. It’s a sacred calling. This actually seems to work, even our protagonist was surprised.
Then comes the boss’s birthday. They throw a big party, with alcohol, and the girl friend returns. The boss and her get together again, which means it was all a ruse! To add insult to injury, the boss humiliates the protagonist in front of everyone, and blasphemes in public, implying the ecstasy out protagonist felt was pure genital stimulation, a sacred cock. That hits a nerve, so our protagonist just slaps her boss, during a party. Ooof.
After that, she leaves the house and goes on a bender, drinks several pints, jerks one kid off in the loo, then fucks some other guy into near completion. She even drunkenly calls an old acquaintance, asking for a date. Getting home is critical but she arrives OK, pukes bile, and has some religious nirvana.
She then knows what to do, dressing up as a nun using bedsheets, dismiss her caring friend, then head up to her old boss’s home and murder her while she sleeps. Only she could feel the daemon inside her, mocking her extreme loneliness and detachment from the world. After ridding the world from a devil, she can only immolate herself on the beach. Under his eye.
Both protagonists are very lonely people, for different reasons. The hedonist is just trying to live the rest of her life in peace, but the religious nutter is a murderous crazy person. They should have cooperated further.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.