Critique : The Testament of Ann Lee
par Savina Petkova
- VENISE 2025 : Amanda Seyfried brille dans la réécriture en forme de comédie musicale signée Mona Fastvold de la vie de la cheffe du mouvement religieux des Shakers

Cet article est disponible en anglais.
While working on her 2020 Venice competition entry The World to Come, writer-director Mona Fastvold was researching religious hymns from the Upstate New York area and came across the worship songs of the Shaker movement. Intrigued by the devotion and the context around the sect’s female leader – Mother Ann Lee – Fastvold started developing her third feature as a director, which is now The Testament of Ann Lee, world-premiering at Venice once again, in competition. True to its namesake and the chanting-dancing Shaker prayers, the film is a musical: its songs have been adapted from the aforementioned hymns and composed by Oscar winner Daniel Blumberg, with choreography by Celia Rowlson Hall (Vox Lux).
Mamma Mia! [+lire aussi :
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making of
fiche film] star Amanda Seyfried plays Ann, the young woman who joins the Quaker-Shakers in Manchester, dissatisfied with the Church of England’s preaching. Her life, like that of every religious figure, is marked by suffering: all four of her children die in infancy, she is locked up in an asylum, and she is later prosecuted and jailed for the obstructive nature of the Shakers’ prayer sessions. Purging their sins through ecstatic movements and song, they also practise voluntary celibacy, and a big part of the movie revolves around Ann’s own ambivalent relationship with carnality and sex, especially in relation to her ever-horny husband Abraham (Christopher Abbott). Abbott has appeared in all three of Fastvold’s films and always in roles defined by sexual (dis)satisfaction, perfecting his iterations of a cherubic, belligerent man who loves, lusts and hates deeply. Aggressive and brimming with resentment to his wife’s vow of chastity, he might as well be jealous of God Himself.
The original script, co-written by Fastvold and her usual collaborator Brady Corbet (The Brutalist [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]), follows the linear, cumulative logic of hagiographic text – enlightenment, trials and tribulations, divine providence, and eventual martyrdom – but the big difference is that The Testament of Ann Lee doesn’t ask you to believe. It doesn’t exactly invite scepticism either, but it strikes a very fine balance between being sympathetic of and curious about Mother Ann. For example, there are only a few scenes of preaching and ritualistic prayer, and there’s the avoidance of conventional central compositions by cinematographer William Rexer, who keeps it dynamic and just slightly off-beat, in addition to using faint natural light that gives all of the faces a soft, porcelain-like glow.
Blumberg’s songs are centred on Seyfried’s ringing soprano, and even when her voice thins and flutters at the highest octaves, there is something truly angelic to its resonance. The flipside of that is that other actors pale in comparison, since the musical numbers she’s given are rich in inflections, which lend themselves perfectly to her soaring timbre. The Testament of Ann Lee is a meticulously crafted film about faith, yet it remains self-contained as a story; the script never veers into overly praising Mother Ann as a feminist icon ahead of her time, and it doesn’t make a huge deal out of her understanding of gender and racial equality in 18th-century England and colonial America. Instead, it keeps just the right amount of distance to grant us the joy and delight of storytelling – thoroughly researched, rendered and delivered with the convictions of the cinema “to come”.
The Testament of Ann Lee was produced by Kaplan Morrison (USA) and Intake Films (UK), in co-production with Hungary’s Proton Cinema. Charades handles its world sales.
(Traduit de l'anglais)
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