The Girl from Monday

Infobox Film | name = The Girl from Monday


caption =
writer = Hal Hartley
starring = Tatiana Abracos
director = Hal Hartley
producer = Steve Hamilton
released = 2005 (U.S.)
runtime = 84 min.
language = English
imdb_id = 0388973

"The Girl from Monday" is a film made in 2005. The film deals with the consequences of business monopolization and globalization. Filmed entirely in Jersey City and New York City, the film was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival. After a limited run in New York, it was shown at various festivals in America and Europe.

Plot summary

A being from another planet (Abracos) arrives on Earth and takes human form.

In voiceover, Jack Bell (Bill Sage) explains how his ideas came to bring the "triple M" into power and reduce human beings to mere consumers, pawns of the corporation.

Jack tries to hook up with Cecile (Sabrina Lloyd) but fails, leading the insurance company to investigate why this happened. The insurance agent decides it's not Cecile's fault and her premium remains the same, while Jack's is raised.

By chance Cecile meets up with a teenager in the counter-revolution, who takes her to a place where people have sex because it feels good. Cecile is arrested and sentenced to "two years hard labor... teaching high school."

At the high school, Cecile reads Thoreau's book "Walden" and is inspired to join the counter-revolution.

Meanwhile, Jack finds the girl from the planet Monday (named after its discoverer, Vincent Monday, explains Jack in voice-over) and teaches her how to fit in in human society. But the girl, who refers to herself as 'nobody', just wants to go home. Jack, it turns out, is also from that planet, and has tried and failed to go home. They go to the ocean, where the girl walks into the ocean. Jack says he doesn't know if she made it or not.

Themes

Almost all of the themes of the film are given in Jack's voiceovers. Society is too commercial, there is no privacy on the Internet. Children are given attention-deficit drugs and taught through "virtual playstations" supervised by convicts because too many of them bring guns to school.

Criticism

Stephen Holden, writing for "The New York Times", opines that "Like so many science fiction fantasies, Hal Hartley's new film begins with a clever satirical premise, then stumbles all over itself trying to tell a coherent, original story." Peter Hanson, writing for "Film Threat", called it "A profoundly unnecessary movie."

In comparison to Hartley's earlier work, this film and "No Such Thing" "may have lacked the impact of his first features, [but] they certainly demonstrate that Hartley is a director still unafraid to take apart and reassemble the medium." [Jason Wood, "Talking Movies: Contemporary World Filmmakers in Interview" London: Wallflower Press (2006): 104]

DVD release

The region 1 DVD release came out on November 7, 2006 and was made available to Netflix customers to rent.

Quotes

* Cecile: "Let's fuck so we can increase our buying power."

References