The Girl from Monday (2005)

Truly Dreadful Film

The Worst Film Ever

Don't Believe the Hype

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Kind of like an episode of X Files.... Girl from Monday has a basic outline of a plot, but we are given more questions than answers. "Someone" from the future comes back looking for "someone else". There's an underground gang of revolutionaries, which keeps almost getting caught. And in the future, somehow sexual intercourse between people has monetary value... but so many inconsistencies here. When William and Cecile have unauthorized love, only she seems to be caught and punished. Yet when Jack and Cecile ALMOST make love, only Jack is punished. The cops of the future seem much more adept at catching people making love than bombing government buildings. and Jack holds down a full time job that does... what, exactly? The basic premise is actually really good, but the script is pretty shaky. Needed tightening up. And the first five minutes employed strange edits, freeze frames, slow motion, and weird jumps. Thankfully, that stopped after the first few minutes. almost turned it off. The only big name I recognized was Edie Falco, from Sopranos and Nurse Jackie. Looks like the director uses her in a bunch of his films. If you like futuristic films which are a little fuzzy, plot wise, and don't mind having many un-answered questions, you'll probably like this one. From Hal Hartley, who has been writing and directing for years. Currently showing on Fandor Channel.

The dialogue is stilted, the acting is just awful, the back story is sketchy---especially frustrating in a film that hangs on its back story---and the "futuristic" props are so cheap as to be comical. The social-scientific concept of the movie sounds rather intriguing when read in summary on Wikipedia, but it's not fleshed out in the film. Worse yet, there's no connection established between that concept and the extra-terrestrial aspects of the story. Overall, this movie lacks a coherent plot, on top of stunningly poor execution. Indeed, the best thing about this film is the titles design. So watch those and move on---don't waste the next 80 minutes of your life.

It is a typical Hal Hartley in terms of the mood he creates. Long in-door shots, the disconcert between sound and sight. As always he uses cheap material. for instance one suspects that the black goggles that the cops wear -with the red light in the center- may be like a 10 dollar toy bought from Chinatown. But this combined with the camera moves and lights allows him to create a different world that is often visually convincing. Although I heard people in the audience murmur about the connection with the space being unconvincing, I totally disagree.It is a meditation on capitalism where the term 'flesh market' gets literal. He weaves this theme in with reflections on the sense of the extremeness of the boundaries between individuals in modern capitalist society. How one feeds the other, in fact makes the other possible. I found it very successful although sometimes a bit didactic.

Being a huge fan of the films that Hartley did in the 90's, I couldn't wait to see this movie at Sundance. In fact it was one of the two movies I absolutely had to see (the other one was Mirrormask).I can't say that I got what I expected. The movie proclaims itself to be a "Science fiction film by Hal Harley". It is neither science fiction (unless you count Kurt Vonnegut as science fiction), nor a typical Harley film. The special effects that you expect in a science fiction are nowhere to be found. In fact, big chunks of the movie aren't even in technicolor.The whole movie is shot with very long exposure times and frame rates reaching down to 5-10 fps, leading to a totally dreamlike look.But enough about technicalities... 'As I said the movie was a surprise but a very pleasant one. Harley uses his favorite themes of alienation (this time with actual aliens) and random, but very deep personal connections. He paints a weird but very familiar world of people treating sex as a means to getting what they want -- but with a quite interesting twist. Other current subjects, like civil liberties (ie: the lack thereof) and teenage crime are also treated to a round of deep black, dripping irony.All in all I would recommend the movie, but not as a mindless Friday-night excursion. I give it an A.