| The Girl from Monday | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Hal Hartley |
| Produced by | Steve Hamilton |
| Written by | Hal Hartley |
| Starring | Bill Sage, Sabrina Lloyd, Tatiana Abracos, Leo Fitzpatrick |
| Release date(s) | 2005 |
| Running time | 84 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Girl from Monday is a 2005 American film directed by Hal Hartley. The film deals with the consequences of business monopolization and globalization. Filmed in New York City and Puerto Rico, 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.
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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.
The innovative idea Jack contributes to Triple M is that, since sexually active people are the most active consumers, people will record each of their sexual encounters as an economic transaction. This will increase their desirability rating, their value as sexual commodities, and therefore also their credit rating. Because of its direct relation to one's credit rating and buying power, insurance policies covering a person's sexual desirability are available.
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 into 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.
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.
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."[1]
The region 1 DVD release came out on November 7, 2006 and was made available to Netflix customers to rent.
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