The Girl from Monday

Being a huge fan of the films that Hartley did in the 90's, I couldn't wait to see this movie at Sundance. In fact it was one of the two movies I absolutely had to see (the other one was Mirrormask).

I can't say that I got what I expected. The movie proclaims itself to be a "Science fiction film by Hal Harley". It is neither science fiction (unless you count Kurt Vonnegut as science fiction), nor a typical Harley film. The special effects that you expect in a science fiction are nowhere to be found. In fact, big chunks of the movie aren't even in technicolor.

The whole movie is shot with very long exposure times and frame rates reaching down to 5-10 fps, leading to a totally dreamlike look.

But enough about technicalities... 'As I said the movie was a surprise but a very pleasant one. Harley uses his favorite themes of alienation (this time with actual aliens) and random, but very deep personal connections. He paints a weird but very familiar world of people treating sex as a means to getting what they want -- but with a quite interesting twist. Other current subjects, like civil liberties (ie: the lack thereof) and teenage crime are also treated to a round of deep black, dripping irony.

All in all I would recommend the movie, but not as a mindless Friday-night excursion. I give it an A.

"Simple Men," "Amateur," and "Henry Fool" are among the films of Hal Hartley--one of the wittiest and most sophisticated independent directors working in America today.

After seeing "Simple Men," I eagerly waited the release on video of each new Hartley film, and relentlessly hunted down his early work and short films as well. Mostly, I found his movies to be totally and refreshingly offbeat, unpredictable, and irreverent--yet also very watchable--with great plots, likable characters, and a sense of humor that was wry and goofy by turns.

His photographic style was crisp and painterly; and though it may it may have looked conventional, its flat lighting and muted colors, coupled with deadpan dialogue and the movement and ear of a good play, it was obvious to anyone that this was genuine "auteur" direction.

But Hartley's more recent work—"The Book of Life," "No Such Thing," and now "The Girl from Monday," has failed to stir in me even the slightest interest. There are vestiges in these films of vintage Hartley; but the thrill is definitely gone.

As he did in "The Book of Life," Hartley once again decides to offset the horizon in almost every scene—a few degrees to the left, a few degrees to the right—and he indulges in other eccentricities as well, like cutting out frames to make the motion jagged, or moving the camera in and out of focus—in short adding disruption after disruption--all to no purpose that I can discover. Personally, I find nothing interesting and nothing functional in this new, crabbed style of his.

The plot of "Girl" is jejune in the extreme—yet another distopic look at a future of totalitarian rule, with a bit of alien intervention to muddy the mix still further. (Someone on this list compared the sci-fi facet to "The Man Who Fell To Earth." Indeed, the theft is so blatant, Roeg should have been mentioned in the credits.) This movie has little to recommend it—even for a Hartley enthusiast like I (was).

It is a typical Hal Hartley in terms of the mood he creates. Long in-door shots, the disconcert between sound and sight. As always he uses cheap material. for instance one suspects that the black goggles that the cops wear -with the red light in the center- may be like a 10 dollar toy bought from Chinatown. But this combined with the camera moves and lights allows him to create a different world that is often visually convincing. Although I heard people in the audience murmur about the connection with the space being unconvincing, I totally disagree.

It is a meditation on capitalism where the term 'flesh market' gets literal. He weaves this theme in with reflections on the sense of the extremeness of the boundaries between individuals in modern capitalist society. How one feeds the other, in fact makes the other possible. I found it very successful although sometimes a bit didactic.

Is this Hartley following Godard's footsteps and becoming "political"? Political commentary is never interesting, unless it is executed in an interesting way. Luckily, this is one of those cases.

I'm amazed at the quality of the shots considering they used a DCR-VX2000 for this movie. How many cameras did they use? One I suspect.

Hartley's World is that of an intelligent essayist, specially since he quit making movies like "Surviving Desire" and "Trust". "Theory of Achievement" was heavily influenced by "La Chinoise", as much as the form of a "short" could take it. Here we have the same intent, but turned into a fictional narrative. It works, but only if you understand the reasoning behind it.

So hopefully this was just a blip on the screen of an otherwise good career. Was the talk of the Sundance shuttle bus...but not in a good way.

Too many amateurish techniques. Voice over narration in an attempt to get a noir feeling but most of the time was actually for exposition because the story wasn't getting told on the screen.

Bad camera technique that would be okay in small doses (ie: a dream sequence) but was tiring and distracting from the opening credits onward. Kept waiting for the "real" movie to start.

The girl from Monday doesn't make an appearance for quite awhile in the movie and then gets left in an apartment to learn to use her body (or course she swam out of the ocean quite well).

Anyway...I had to leave about the time the boy was getting "raped" in the school bathroom. Time is too precious at Sundance and I went to "Rory O'Shea was Here" and the contrast couldn't have been higher between the two.

Is probably a waste of time to anyone but his fans.

D.