One thing is for certain by the end of Monday (both the film and the weekday of the title, on which the denouement is set): the lovers at the center of Rob Hayes and director Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ screenplay deserve each other. This is not a compliment, as these are seriously damaged and insufferable people who hate being honest with each other but really, really like sex. They do the deed so many times that one might lose track of the fact that the romps in the proverbial sack are there to push off some argument or confrontation that might do some good for their relationship. There isn’t even a beginning to that relationship, after all.
Mickey (Sebastian Stan) has been in Athens, Greece, for seven years, ever since some unspoken anxiety forced him to leave his band and occupation as a music producer and pursue some distance from his old life. Chloe (Denise Gough) breaks up with her boyfriend over the phone when we first see her, and she definitely has some choice, if drunken, four-letter words for the man. They are the only Americans in the immediate vicinity of the wild party that is being thrown, and then they meet each other on accident. You get two guesses as to what follows an impulsive kiss.
Before we have even become accustomed to their personalities or chemistry, the two are on a whirlwind romance whose only foundation is physical attraction. We soon realize, of course, that these two have a minimum of personality and almost no genuine chemistry of which to speak. These two performances are neither emotionally precise nor generous, reminding more of actors who attended a single table-read and otherwise failed to rehearse with each other.
Worse than the wobbly performances, though, is the sincere impression that neither Hayes nor Papadimitropoulos is particularly interested in reaching any kind of truth within this relationship. Instead, we get either the broad strokes of early marital bliss and/or squabbling and the quotidian minutiae of, say, dealing with the set-up of a couch in the living room ― a minor but significant subplot that goes on and on, seemingly for ages, until the point of no actual conclusion.
We get a few details about their respective past lives, such as the fact that Mickey has a six-year-old child (yes, you’ve done that math correctly) for whom he is fighting for any sort of custody and that Chloe’s ex-boyfriend Christos (Andreas Konstantinou) is apparently a toxic weight upon her shoulders. More false drama arises: Mickey’s old bandmate Bastian (Dominique Tipper, quite good) shows up to attempt to drag him back into the music scene, which leads to Mickey and his friend/enabler Argyris (Yorgos Pyrpasoupoulos) to record jingles for corporations. Aspa (Elli Tringou), the mother of Mickey’s child, fights back against the custody battle, but thankfully, Chloe is a lawyer. Christos returns, mostly for the purpose of tormenting Chloe.
It’s all very melodramatic, but none of it comes to mean much by a climax that has Mickey and Chloe, both naked as the day they were born, causing a scene after taking some drugs, having wild and very public sex, and finally bearing their souls to their partner. This is meant to be a release for the characters, for Monday, and for us. More accurately, it seems like an act of delaying the inevitable until this flimsy movie cannot hold that weight. Eventually, it must all collapse, and it’s not entertaining to watch.
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