Venice Film Festival 2025 – The Testament Of Ann Lee ★★★★

Released: TBC (Venice Film Festival)

Director: Mona Fastvold

Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Lewis Pullman

It’s said, by those who study such things, that even in an overall great screen performance, there will usually be one scene which wins the actor/actress their Oscar. Often the scene will include a powerful monologue or a display of raw emotion. But it will be the scene in which the skills of the thespian are fully showcased and pulls together neatly the brilliance of the rest of the performance.

But there are also performances that are liberally strewn with a series of moments of sustained brilliance, to create an overall tour de force but without one standout scene which encapsulates it all.

Amanda Seyfried delivers such a revelatory turn in this bold, unique telling of the life of Ann Lee, the 18th century evangelical founder of the Shakers, a movement which later became known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. In one raw, fierce, frenzied scene after another she lays bare her soul as she communes with the divine and ecstatically shares her visions with her followers who dub her Mother Ann Lee, the female representation of God. They shake, tremble and chant with her in spectacular unison as she extols them to purge sin from their bodies and be purified. 

Mother Ann Lee fervently espoused celibacy as a means to reach spiritual perfection and urged married couples to forego thoughts of physical union. She herself was married and bore four children, none of whom survived infancy. The tough births and subsequent personal trauma and anguish is unflinchingly portrayed, with Seyfried conveying the sufffering as passionately as she does the preaching.

It’s a ferocious, no holds barred performance and she is wholly believable as a cult leader, not least, strangely, because she is so petite and wholesomely pretty. It’s the combination of the childlike countenance and wild-eyed fanaticism and belief in her visions that makes her so compelling. She is utterly bewitching and hypnotic in a role far removed from the sunny, smiling daughter in Mamma Mia. 

Seyfried is ably supported by a stellar surrounding cast led by an impressive Lewis Pullman as her brother, William, who undertakes extensive missionary work for her when the group leave England to spread the word in the Americas where they founded a colony.

Seyfried and Pullman, both American, pull off impressive Mancunian accents and shine amidst the darkly lit first half of the gloom and grit of Manchester in the 1700’s before the lighter scenes of the vast open spaces of America. Amidst the brutality of the sexual and physical abuse Lee suffers, the imprisonment and the degradation, the loyalty and love between the siblings is a ray of brightness. 

Taking the roles is a courageous acting choice by each and they are well served by the bravura, uncompromising filmmaking of director Mona Fastvold who co-wrote the screenplay with husband Brady Corbet. Fastvold doesn’t take the safe option at any point. The fact that, at the Venice screenings people walked out is a, ahem, testament to that. 

The Testament of Ann Lee won’t be for everyone. It is a strange film with a weird, wild-eyed lead character. Many will not know what to make of it. But it’s great that such a film can be financed and made in this risk-averse film era of sequels, superhero franchises and safe biopics. 

Bravo Mona and Amanda. If there is any justice, the vision of Oscars must come into being.