Film Review: Monday Embraces Expat Debauchery
I admit it. I have spent a few years traveling the world as an expat, and, frankly, we are a weird bunch. We are filled with “characters;” individual explorers whom fervently believe that somewhere else, in the world, we belong, but that “somewhere” varies and the people that belong there with us transform into the many nomads that cross our path. We are a friendly but individualistic peoples; welcoming to all but undeterred in living only for ourselves. After all, there is a world to discover, and Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ Monday understands this. The film perfectly captures the blissful, magnetic self-centeredness of expat life through a couple doomed to intoxicate and frustrate each other.
Firstly, the film is extremely nostalgic. There are so many club and sex scenes, you want to watch it with some popcorn, hand sanitizer, and your new face mask. It paints a world of free touch that we don’t have anymore, which makes it, inadvertently, become a period piece; a fresh relic of a time when people were safer to be salacious. Yet, even then, the expat community is particular in its eagerness to push sexual, cultural, and personal boundaries. Sebastian Stan’s Mickey and Denise Gough’s Chloe scope each other out like devourers; eager to live life to the fullest but hesitant on declaring whether the other stops that. They become the epitome of Toxic AF relationships.
Ugh! You ever have a friend who is enamored by her “chemistry” with a man while simultaneously complaining he’s a jerk? Yeah…. Denise Gough’s Chloe is that friend. She is fierce, independent, and growingly dependent on a love story that isn’t even declared “love.” Stan smirks and charms as Mickey; the perpetual bachelor whose playboy tendencies clash with his genuinely caring nature. To him, Chloe is a golden partner; someone as vivacious and intelligent as him, but the true question is whether he is her gold?
Chloe and Mickey are a pair with the privilege and determination to find another life, somewhere else, out of an inner need rather than a systemic one. Yet, it is that very drive to feel spiritually in place as a human being, beyond what you attain, that might make them even more easily dissatisfied. As we watch Mondays pass, over various weeks, and see their passion fire and fizzle, Argyris Papadimitropoulos writing and direction ask viewers to question whether free spirits can truly partner without quelling the other’s freedom. IFC’s Mondays Is Out On VOD platforms, and it is, truly, one of the most stunning, fascinating releases of 2021.
