‘Fanny Lye Deliver’d’ review: a feminist awakening in early modern Britain
Part historical character study, part home invasion thriller, Thomas Clay’s long-gestating third feature (first shot in 2015) is a folk horror fable set just after the English Revolution. Taking place almost entirely in a cavernous, thatched Shropshire farmhouse in 1657, Fanny Lye Deliver’d introduces Maxine Peake’s dutiful wife and mother as repressed yet capable, living under the command of her Puritan husband John (Game Of Thrones‘ Charles Dance).Visibly older than Fanny and with a firm grip on his household, John controls his wife and their young son Arthur (Zak Adams) in an occasionally brutish manner that he learned from his time in the military.