This film’s first picture is of a disco ball; the primary track on its soundtrack is Donna Summer’s 1977 “I Feel Love.” But “Monday” isn’t a interval piece.
The director Argyris Papadimitropoulos, who co-wrote the film with Rob Hayes, understands that for some partyers from the Balearic Islands to the Mediterranean — this film’s English-speaking soon-to-be-lovers are launched to one another whereas getting their freak on within the director’s native Greece — staying younger entails nostalgia for a sybaritic period you didn’t really reside by means of.
Mickey (Sebastian Stan), a D.J., and Chloe (Denise Gough), a lawyer, meet cute, and totally smashed, on a Friday evening, and get up the subsequent morning bare on a seashore. They’re hauled off by cops to an embarrassed however not terribly traumatic reckoning with the legislation. These engaging characters are properly previous their 20s, which by some lights makes them a hair too outdated to be carrying on like this. Which is a part of the movie’s level, in actual fact.
The film chronicles multiple weekend — it follows the connection over nearly a yr, however every sequence kicks off on a Friday and ends on a Monday. Movie lovers who bemoan that modern movie is bereft of each romance and intercourse take be aware: The glue that retains these two collectively is fiery bodily contact, and the intercourse scenes are sufficient for a half-dozen films.
Where their different affinities lie is one thing of a puzzle, however frequent intoxication can render such questions moot. The director’s semi-skewering of rom-com clichés, together with the venerable race-to-the-airport bit, underscores their mutual unsuitability.
While “Monday” is just not fairly as bracing as Papadimitropoulos’s prior function, “Suntan,” it’s a sharply noticed, well-acted image with loads of tart element and some actual stings in its tail.
Monday
Rated R for sexuality, and loads of it. Language, too. In English and Greek, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters and accessible to hire or purchase on Amazon, Google Play and different streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please seek the advice of the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier than watching films inside theaters.
