Monday Movie Storyline. Mickey (Sebastian Stan) and Chloe (Denise Gough), two Americans in their mid-thirties living in Athens, meet in the heat of summer one whirlwind weekend. The chemistry between them is undeniable. When Chloe’s time in Greece is drawing to a close, she decides to give up her high-flying job back home and explore whether one weekend’s passion can blossom into something more. Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ follow up of the festival sensation Suntan is a fun, sensuous romance about how love gets in the way of life, and life gets in the way of love.
Monday is a 2020 drama film directed by Argyris Papadimitropoulos, from a screenplay he wrote with Rob Hayes. It stars Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough. The film had its world premiere on September 11, 2020, at the Toronto International Film Festival as part of TIFF Industry Selects. It was released in the United States on April 16, 2021, by IFC Films. The film received mixed reviews from critics.
The film had its world premiere on September 11, 2020, at the Toronto International Film Festival as part of TIFF Industry Selects. It was scheduled to have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 15, 2020. However, the festival was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2021, IFC Films acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film and set it for a April 16, 2021, release.
Film Review for Monday
Americans abroad Chloe (Irish actor Denise Gough, better known for her stage work, especially in the National Theatre revival of Angels in America) and Mickey (Sebastian Stan, a.k.a. the Winter Solider in the Marvel franchise) are the central couple in Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ latest feature Monday (his previous was Suntan). In the opening minutes of the movie, they meet at a party and within seconds they’re furiously sucking face.
Hours later, they wake up in each other’s arms, buck naked on the beach. Months pass. They screw underwater, on the back of a truck in broad daylight on a quiet urban side street, in an alley way and in nearly every room of their rented apartment, a roomy chintz-swathed space that used to belong to a friend’s rich dead grandmother. By the end of the film, they’re riding a motorcycle around Athens naked in December, windmill high and pursued by cops.
There will be viewers out there who will recoil from these two crazy kids’ wild, exhibitionistic carnality, their druggy hedonism and their cavalier attitude toward interior decoration. But anyone else who’s ever been in a relationship like this — especially the kind that starts to feel like a codependent bipolar disorder trapped on a rollercoaster by the end — will painfully relate to Monday‘s sensual, funny and above all honest look at amour fou.
Sure, film history is thickly sprinkled with stories much like this in nearly every language, from all the versions of The Postman Rings Twice to Japan’s In the Realm of the Senses and beyond, via literally dozens of movies from France. What makes this one a bit different is its rigorous grounding in realism, nourished by the spontaneous, semi-improvised performances that reportedly used the screenplay credited to Papadimitropoulos and Rob Hayes only as a road map.
Moreover, Monday‘s story is told through the eyes of both lovers pretty much equally, which means it feels quite different from films like, say, Betty Blue or Crazy/Beautiful, where it’s always the woman who is nuts, but sexy because she’s nuts. (There are ones where they guy is sexy but mentally unstable, such as 1993’s Mr. Jones, but they’re much rarer.)
In truth, although it’s eventually revealed that one of them is aware they have a tendency toward alcoholism that they struggle to keep in check, neither lover is particularly mentally ill or unstable — or at least no more than most typical hard-partying millennial in his or her mid-30s. For people like them, life’s goal is to have as much fun as possible all weekend long without getting arrested or dying. On Monday, it’s back to the grind so you’ll have enough scratch to do it all starting Friday. This is why the film unfolds over a series of weekends several months apart that mark milestones in Chloe and Mickey’s relationship over a year or two.
They are hardly irresponsible. Chloe, who happens to be slightly older than Mickey, is a practicing immigration lawyer. On the night she meets Mickey and ends up with him on the beach, she’s booked on a flight to go back to Chicago and start working at a prominent firm after having lived in Athens for about 18 months. Over the course of what’s their first and potentially last weekend together, New Orleans-born Mickey, a professional DJ, recovering musician and part-time jingle writer, has to show her a good enough time to persuade her not to go while still managing to keep up a don’t-give-a-shit front.
But he sees more in Chloe than just a beautiful leggy blonde who’s a wildcat in bed; and it’s not just that she’s smart and funny. He may not even consciously know it himself, but he also needs her to help him get better access to his young son, whom his ex-girlfriend — a Greek woman named Aspa (Elli Tringou) who’s angry with Mickey’s inability to grow up — is blocking him from seeing.
Monday (2021)
Directed by: Argyris Papadimitropoulos
Starring: Denise Gough, Sebastian Stan, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos, Michalis Laios, Michael Alexakis, Giorgos Valais, Ilektra Gouzeli, Vangelis Mourikis, Foivos Kontogiannis
Screenplay by: Rob Hayes, Argyris Papadimitropoulos
Production Design by: Aliki Kouvaka
Cinematography by: Hristos Karamanis
Film Editing by: Napoleon Stratogiannakis
Costume Design by: Marli Aleiferi
Art Direction by: Stavros Liokalos
Music by: Alexis Grapsas
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, nudity/graphic nudity, drug use, and pervasive language.
Distributed by: IFC Films
Release Date: April 16, 2021
Visits: 22
