Narratively, Monica belongs squarely in the active sub-genre of family drama where the protagonist(s) are tasked with taking care of aging or otherwise ill parents. The genre was, if not quite invented, perfected by Ozu (and Monica features a few direct homages to Ozu’s sprawling oeuvre) but has been popular for decades, such as with fairly recent efforts by Alexander Payne (Nebraska) and Tamara Jenkins (The Savages). The wrinkle that co-writer/director Andrea Pallaoro adds here is that the eponymous protagonist is a trans woman with whom her mother cut ties years earlier.
Much like one of Pallaoro’s earlier films, Hannah, Monica never strays from Monica (Trace Lysette) as she goes about her lonely life in Los Angeles, drives back to her childhood home and attempts to come to terms with her relationship with her mother and brother. Lysette is in every single scene. Lysette’s performance is emotive and strong, probably aided by how closely the film’s plot corresponds to the actor’s personal biography. Monica’s mother Eugenia (Patricia Clarkson) is dying from a brain tumor and suffering various symptoms as a result of her condition. She is irascible, has an unreliable memory and is prone to fits. Monica does not know how to fit into the situation, having been estranged from her family for many years. Does her mother even recognize her daughter (who her mother may still consider her son)? After many failures and an aborted attempt to escape, Monica starts to come to terms with things.
Like in his earlier film, Pallaoro relies on scant dialogue and long, contemplative scenes with beautifully-composed shots often involving a moving or panning camera to tell his story. At times, the compositions are overwrought and induce eye rolls, never more so than a scene featuring home health assistant Leticia (Adriana Barraza) lit and framed like Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Mostly, though, the elaborate and lush cinematography adds to the viewing experience and, like with Hannah, shows off Pallaoro’s knowledge of cinema history (lots of winks to Ozu, Godard and Antonioni, in particular).
One crucial plot device is that Monica is certainly set in our current moment, firmly in the digital age, but has Monica withdraw from digital material culture and return to analog culture and signifiers. This is aided by the fact that the film is shot on 35mm with a nearly square 1:1 ratio. It looks gorgeous. As Monica returns to her unnamed hometown in the Midwest (the film was shot in Cincinnati), she clings to her smartphone as her only lifeline to her normal life as a trans woman in California. But her mother’s home is all analog, with horrible wallpaper and outdated furniture adding to the sense of a place lost in time. As the film progresses, Monica also abandons her phone. Her car is from the ‘90s, she goes to a trucker bar and she and her brother drink tap water from plastic cups while in the hospital waiting room. They make calls using a corded landline.
The film is, in many ways, a return to childhood for Monica, except this time she is comfortably female in gender. It seems that this device (shifting from digital to analog while staying in the 2020s) is also intended to push back against one of the most prominent arguments of transphobes, namely that the increasing visibility and presence of trans people in our society is a result of opportunism, as if being trans is advantageous. In this lens, being trans is just a fad or a phase of teenage rebellion, something immaterial and unnatural that kids adopt because of peer pressure or curiosity. Rather, Pallaoro and Lysette counter, people have always been trans and most knew that they were even in childhood. It is not some digital age illusion, but is rooted in material reality. There is nothing fake or faddish about transgender; it is real, physical and enduring. Peer pressure keeps trans people in the closet, not the inverse. Monica is brash in positing this argument, deliberately playing up Lysette’s physical attractiveness and sexual acts. An uninformed, terminally off-line viewer may not even realize that Monica was a trans person.
Overall, it is impossible to separate Monica from the transness of its lead actor and protagonist. It is very much — and is trying very much to be — a film arguing that trans people deserve basic human rights and deserve to not be persecuted. This is obviously incredibly important in this very moment in May 2023, as Florida launches a fascistic crackdown on its trans community. It dovetails nicely with Sports Illustrated putting trans model Kim Petrus on its cover for the swimsuit issue. Monica’s social relevance is heightened by the current idiotic meltdown of the worst and dumbest people on the internet over Bud Light using trans activist Dylan Mulvaney in an ad. With all of that said, it would be unfair to Monica to reduce it to some PSA about the necessity of standing up against anti-trans bigotry. It is also a lovingly made film by an obvious cinephile with brilliant cinematography, set design and acting that fits seamlessly into a popular sub-genre detailing one of the fundamental aspects of the human condition: our parental figures will get old and/or sick.
Photo courtesy of IFC Films
The post Monica appeared first on Spectrum Culture.