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| Synopsis:- |
| Consider a world where citizens are actually proud to be stock options whose market value goes up or down depending on their sexual activity. A world where having sex just because it feels good is against the law. A world where one's credit rating determines everything. |
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| My review:- |
| The Girl From Monday is an intriguing piece that blends a vision of a distopian future with a tale of a visitor to Earth. The theme of capitalism taken to the |
| ultimate extreme so that it almost becomes fascism (and that sexual activity |
| directly affects your credit rating) is interesting and there are echoes of 1984 |
| in the idea and the presentation. But there is a twist - that of the girl from |
| Monday herself. The girl is an alien and Monday is a star system. Aliens from |
| this system are active in the "conter-revolutionary" movement that seeks to |
| destabilise the government. |
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| I found the two ideas didn't sit well together - not |
| least because the technology level was broadly equivalent to our own and any |
| aliens capable of interstellar travel wouldn't have to mess about with a mostly |
| teenage-led revolution to destabilise the government - and felt Hal Hartley should have |
| stuck to one theme. Either a "1984" or a "man Who Fell to Earth". This rather involved plot |
| required extensive narration from Bill Sage's character in the manner of an |
| old-time private detective story and narration is never the best way to tell a story withing amovie. |
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| The story is that Bill Sage and Sabrina (Cecile) are advertising execs in a firm |
| which put the present government in power. But Bill is secretly a big player in |
| the counter-revolution. After an aborted tryst with Bill's character leaves her |
| feeling low, Cecile has a chance meeting (and sexual encounter) with a teenage |
| boy who is a revolutionary. She finds herself attracted to the idea of sex "just |
| because it feels good" and becomes involved with the revolutionaries. But she is |
| found out and, in an amusing notion, is sentenced to be a high school teacher. |
| She continues her efforts to rebel and ultimately is forced to go on the run. |
| She runs to Bill Sage's character and meets the girl from Monday, who she |
| becomes friends with. But she is eventually caught and sent to the moon. |
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| Meanwhile, Bill Sage's character has found the girl from Monday and is hiding |
| her at his apartment while he tries to stop his role in the movement being |
| exposed. They too are found out and captured but escape Cecile's fate. The girl |
| decides she must go home but Bill says he will wait for Cecile. |
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| What starts as the story of Bill Sage's character, quickly turns into the story of Cecile and this is far and away the most compelling element of the movie thanks in no small part to a superb performance from Sabrina as she runds the gamut from had-nased exec, through sexually vulnerable women, to naively eager revolutionary. |
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| The girl from Monday herself seems largely irrelevant |
| and I think they would have been far better leaving out the alien stuff as it |
| really didn't add anything to the more interesting (to me) aspects of the film |
| and probably got in the way of fully exploring the social extreme it depicted. |
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| However, the film is generally very well performed by all and Sabrina is |
| outstanding. She looks fabulous, even (or especially) in the high school |
| "prison" uniform she wears for much of the movie. You get a lot of Sabrina for |
| your bucks in this one. |
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| NB: The Girl From Monday is available on DVD. |
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