Goodness knows we\u2019ve had our fill of feral 18th-century folk musicals about fundamentalist Christian sects, featuring Mamma Mia! alumni in all-panting, all-vibrating lead roles. But Mona Fastvold, the co-writer of Oscar-winning The Brutalist<\/a>, has seen fit to throw another on the pile.<\/p>\n Of course I\u2019m being glib. One of the many pleasures of watching Fastvold\u2019s ravishingly staged and thrillingly ambitious The Testament of Ann Lee (which she wrote with her husband, Brady Corbet, The Brutalist\u2019s director) is knowing that after unearthing Ann Lee\u2019s story she must have thought to herself: yes, this should be a movie, and one with song-and-dance numbers<\/a> to boot. Lee was the Manchester-born founder of the Shakers, who emigrated to New York in the 1770s and founded a colony: not a story obviously long on razzmatazz. And yet within a short space of time, you realise Fastvold\u2019s instincts were right.<\/p>\n Amanda Seyfried is eerily beguiling as Ann Lee, a blacksmith\u2019s girl who is radicalised by her early life in England\u2019s grim industrial north<\/p>\n With a severe air and mostly plausible Mancunian accent, Amanda Seyfried<\/a> is eerily beguiling as Ann, a blacksmith\u2019s girl who is radicalised by her early life in England\u2019s grim industrial north. Appalled by the ambient cruelty and squalor, and scarred by the death of all four of her children in infancy, she becomes a lay preacher whose chief interest is sex \u2013 specifically, the prohibition of it as the devil\u2019s business.<\/p>\n She soon attracts a band of followers from the city\u2019s community of Quakers<\/a>, led by Ann\u2019s benefactor, James Wardley, played by David Cale in one of the film\u2019s many enjoyably knobbly character turns. Eventually the lot of them are setting sail for America and Edenic new beginnings, having since come to believe that Ann is no mere prophet but the female second coming of Christ him\u2026 no, herself. Her husband, Abraham (Christopher Abbott), doesn\u2019t seem completely on board, but up against such faith, there\u2019s not much he can do.<\/p>\n Amanda Seyfried (right) and Mona Fastvold at the Venice Film Festival for The Testament of Ann lee<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
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