Monster was much more of a Monster than I expected, a big one. Charlize Theron was remarkably different, in looks, body language, attitude and accent from the film I saw her in last weekend, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. One of the surprises was Selby, Christina Ricci’s character, the woman who was the final element in making Theron’s Aileen Wournos a serial killer.
Selby could not have been more of a passive/aggressive manipulator. Wournos killed her first man after meeting Selby but before really getting involved with her, but that first one was self-defense and it was Selby who insisted she keep going from there to put food on the dinner table and a roof over it.
Patty Jenkins did a terrific job in both writing and directing her first feature. The pacing, a bit meandering early on, picked up after the first act and matched the story well. She doesn’t make Wournos sympathetic at all to open, just a drunken whore, but does the old onion layer trick–only moments prior to the climax do we hear her tell Selby that a family friend began raping her at eight and when she finally told her dad he blew her off. Then killed himself.
No doubt Wournos was a loaded gun, and the man who raped and tried to kill her put a bullet in the chamber. Selby put her finger on the trigger and pulled. Wournos was so transformed by her love for Selby, the first chance she had for real emotional sustenance, that she took the whole rap–electrocuted in the chair in 2002–and let her off entirely.
definitely recommended
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