Deep within the everyday living and standards set by ourselves is a fault or purpose. Monica, at first, has neither. A routine setlist of achievements and shortcomings of a woman returning to the family she left behind and has confused with her current, jilted way of living. It comes to a head with the matriarch of the family, Eugenia (Patricia Clarkson), falls ill, leaving the titular Monica (Trace Lysette) to pick up the fragments and pieces left over from her previous departure. Leaving family behind is never easy, even if temporary – as often is the case with bubbling tensions the likes of Monica hope to cover – but it is unique and charming all the same. Small doses of real sincerity are injected into the fabric this piece from Andrea Pallaoro wishes to cover.
Despite that desire to cover the tracks of a woman away from her family, Monica takes a long while to get to grips with the why and how. It moves at a crawl, leading to intimate and rewarding scenes of brief sincerity later in the feature. The offset of that is to have such agonisingly dull moments before it. The tears of losing someone to their illness are not founded emotionally but technically, beautiful shot composition from Pallaoro, shadowed and muffled tears from Clarkson’s unique performance. Capturing grief is a tough condition to achieve, yet it is no surprise that previous Pallaoro collaborator Charlotte Rampling captured such a state during 45 Years. Dramas of the soul and intimate familial bonds are plentiful; it is the exploration of it that provides the in.
What is the in, then, for Monica? Beyond its haphazard direction and its sincerity in the face of grief and how a family tackles it, Monica fails to understand the issues at the heart. They are implied, vaguely, and they are pushed aside by hard-to-justify technical choices. The unflinching, unmoving camera works in places, but not as a style. If it is a commentary on family life being just out of frame and the reach of understanding, then it fails because of the faux mysteries its rather simple script attempt to make. Lysette’s performance is the usual affair of cold opening, emotional outburst and peace offering to round it all out. Her work here is exceptional, a shining light for a feature otherwise hoping to skirt on by with a script that does not reward its directing style.
As every day and common as the Pulp track buried deep in the heart of this, the eponymous character is indeed a common person. Common People marked a track of living as free as possible in rigid circumstances while others watched on with the ability to leave. Monica is a tale of a woman coming to terms with the decision to leave not being the ethical one, not being the right choice. It is not good for the soul to abandon those who need or mean the most, but sometimes that is the safest and easiest choice to make. Monica takes aim at those that could do so but thought better of it with a ripple or two through its slowly-burning, unmoving production. It is a film that relies on the cast far more than it does the direction, which places the camera down and fixates on one spot. Performers move around the fixated position because life for the everyday person is just as unmoving as the camera that watches on.
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