read our review ahead of trans on screen’s Presentation of Monica (2023) at Genesis Cinema, London, on January 24th
In early moments, Monica feels like a ghost story. Returning to her family for the first time since her teens, after being estranged for several years, she reappears to care for her sick mother. In one scene her mother asks in the night “how long have you been standing there?” as Monica floats silently in a dark doorway like an apparition, at once haunting and haunted by the family she ran away from. Across its slow-burning run time, Monica contemplates what it means to return to those we have left behind with a complex physicality that ranges from tender to explicit.
“Lysette’s understated but always captivating performance expresses a trans feminine ennui that I’ve rarely seen on screen”
There is something almost supernatural about the premise, despite it being a plausible scenario for trans viewers. The unique experience some trans people have of disappearing from our families, only to reappear completely unrecognizable is a scenario that is rich for this kind of contemplative character study. It reminded me of Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman for the quiet way it asks us to think of how we could connect with our mothers across seemingly impossible circumstances.
At the heart of such a question, Trace Lysette moves across the screen with the ease and glamour of an absolute movie star, paired with the restraint of a truly gifted actor. I particularly adored seeing her character explored through the film’s musical choices. Monica feels most alive to me when driving and breaking down to Pulp in a way that deliciously re-contextualises Common People, wearing a Cocteau Twins t-shirt or dancing to Dragostea Din Te by O-Zone as she gets glammed up. The synth pop, 90s indie and euro trash inclinations of her music taste feel real and embodied by Lysette’s performance throughout, making me lean in and want to get to know and hang out with Monica.
Framed in a tight 4:3 aspect ratio, Monica’s lens feels focused on the present, while its character’s pasts hangs equally heavy in both the precise, conversational dialogue and the ever-present unsaid feelings. This is not a movie that spells it out for you, or one that reaches a clear peak or climax. Instead, Andrea Pallaoro chooses restraint. In a, perhaps, simpler movie a confrontation between Monica and her family or an “inspirational” monologue might be expected. However, the choice to explore quietness and give focus to Monica’s interiority feels more generous to its viewers, particularly to its trans audience, as such space gives us quality time to reflect and draw our own conclusions.
Monica does not loudly seek to represent a whole community, instead it studies its protagonist singularly with a quiet poignancy. Monica and her mother, played excellently by Patricia Clarkson, feel alive and real in the ways they both do and don’t reconnect. With its character focus the film breathes with ease, existing with a thoughtful delicacy, allowing you to take what you bring to it.
Monica’s meditative tone gave me time to reflect and think on my own relationship to my family. Lysette’s understated but always captivating performance expresses a trans feminine ennui that I’ve rarely seen on screen but reminds me of a familiar out-of-step feeling that re-approaching family after a period of time away can create. A desire to connect while feeling like you can’t share much of yourself is palpable in Trace Lysette’s intentionally distant performance. She is at once soft and tough, vulnerable and withdrawn, particularly in her physicality.
“Monica shines because of its restraint and the allowance it gives the viewers to reach their own conclusions from within the true riches of Trace Lysette’s stylish and enigmatic character study.”
From camming in her family home to returning from a truck hook-up then sharing a bed with her sick mother, Monica’s physicality moves between the familial and sexual with stark contrast. In past film screenings Oestrogeneration have hosted, of Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Adrian Silvestre’s Sediments, post-screening discussions have often raised concerns of how trans women’s bodies are sexualized or feel unnecessarily exposed by cis-male directors.
I always see these concerns as sisterly-care coming from our trans audiences towards trans actresses and how they are treated on set, or concerns for how bodies like ours are physically represented on screen through the male gaze. I can imagine similar concerns being raised by our readership about Monica, however, I would argue the portrayals of sex and nudity are key to the film. Touch is a broad theme and tool used to express the previously mentioned feeling of out-of-step-ness or isolation trans woman can feel, showing the complicated physicality within that disconnect.
Touch is used throughout to portray tensions in Monica’s life. The film is somewhat sandwiched between two massages, beginning with one for, who I assume is, a client of Monica’s, to a near-conclusive, tender massage given to her mother. A decisive narrative is not drawn between the two experiences, one is not presented as more or less significant than the other. It is more an exhibition of the complicated ways Monica lets herself touch and be touched by others, who she has let in and who she has expelled.
Monica exists on a rich tightrope between loss and gain – at once losing and re-gaining a mother while caring for her, continually losing and gaining agency with the men in her life throughout the film or the sacrifice it took to become the woman she needed to be, to name a few dichotomies she operates between. Lysette moves across these slow tumults with a commanding guard. She does not have a relationship to confide in throughout the film, instead, Lysette stands singularly as Monica, an isolated figure of quiet strength and reserved vulnerability.
I found Monica often rewarding in its quiet. In many ways, this could be a louder or simpler film, but Monica does not go towards clichéd sentiments of forgiveness or spoken conclusions. In its quiet complexity, Monica shines because of its restraint and the allowance it gives the viewers to reach their own conclusions from within the true riches of Trace Lysette’s stylish and enigmatic character study.
book your tickets to trans on screen’s presentation of monica (2023) here