there's a profound hotness to charlize theron as a confident, loving provider with dumpy acid wash jeans and hair sprayed into an eternal wind tunnel pomp. she has a real butch aura. the makeup artist kind of went out of her way to make charlize more worn & alien than aileen ever could have been--face & body spray painted w/ freckles, eyebrows half-shaved. the night before this, i watched the uhhhh cinematic classic the devil wears prada, in which the consistent butt of the joke is how fat & ugly size-six anne hathaway (dressed in an ill fitting sweater like any other woman in 2006) is. this film really goes for it w/ "ugly," but instead of being told again & again how ugly aileen is, we get the astonished awe of her girlfriend. "the guys must be lining up for you," selby tells aileen with heart eyes. it's true to the world--not hollywood--where someone's face holds everything we love about them, a little mirror of adoration.
im obsessed with aileen's hulking presence in all things but especially on the roller rink floor, taking lead in a couples skate to "don't stop believing," & initiating a kiss w/ burning eye contact even tho it's 1989 & the small-town rumor mill is a supporting character. in one scene she emerges from around the bend of a go-kart track w/ this brilliant here comes your man glee. casting christina ricci for this fictionalized version of wuornos's girlfriend was a choice & results in this utter cavern of space between the two of them--aileen intensely hunching to meet selby's gaze. another level of hot awkwardness. i want to meet the person who did this. there is so much pain & suffering in this film but the parts that are sweet really sing.
if i'm allowed to continue to treat this movie as a lesbian romance, i was drawn to the journey selby goes through, gaining confidence from aileen & working through a young soft butch's wardrobe--moving from the sensible christian layering of her youth to dickies & doc martens. she tries out a beanie, even, which unfortunately later re-appears in her wanted sketch in a way that really feels like a cruel joke about lesbian fashion (who wrote that into the movie??? i demand to know). she is naive & then she's not. lesbian films love age-gaps because they provide a legible power structure (pls email me at gilligcassandra at gmail dot com for my endless thoughts on this very topic) but monster actually does a good job of capturing the weird element of a love that hits at both the most necessary & inopportune time--lovers drifting apart from the very first moment but moving in line all the same.
as you might b able to tell, there are 20 minutes of monster that i find soul-crushingly romantic & maybe it's just because you never get to see two women have a dorky, unpolished, & busted way of loving each other outside of yr own dorky, unpolished, & busted life. it feels insane that this is the package (serial murder, inconceivable trauma) this type of connection must live inside. i have this dream to do supercuts of all the lesbian films that end w/ great suffering & instead give us the half hour of loving bliss we deserve. i think a lot about the first part of the film freeheld (a sweet story of two women who meet at intramural sports practice) & turning it off the second julianne moore starts to show signs of illness, pretending she's just pulled something & she'll sort it out in water aerobics. or a version of carol where there's no private investigator trailing them at the motel, just another few weeks of vacation to look forward to. what if these movies left us w/ our own imaginations for a while. two dykes in a movie can't even go grocery shopping w/o incident. one day i'll go to the theater & be so bored i finally feel alive.
there's a lot i could say about this movie that i don't have necessary space to cover (nor the right drive or authority). it is a difficult film to watch. i don’t know what to make of this movie’s impulse to root wuornos’s actions so heavily in the romance narrative—does it suggest that harm is not enough of a trigger? i appreciate monster’s refusal to glamorize or editorialize violence--it is matter of fact. i love the steady presence of florida & its frantic but boring backdrop. the director seems to have a lot of integrity & respect for aileen's story. the oscars are a load of crock but it really does seem like if anyone deserved a truckload of trophies dropped in their front yard in 2003, it was charlize theron. toward the end of the movie, aileen's whole body is otherworldly as she trembles at the bus station contemplating the future. the story's fissure lives inside her. there's never a moment that you remember it's charlize--u have no chance to.
my ability to dissect this movie as entertainment is not w/o a complication. i had lately been thinking a lot about aileen wuornos after the january death of lisa marie montgomery--two women who experienced unthinkable childhood trauma and were murdered by a government that holds death as a reasonable alternative to care. i am uncomfortable with the economy of true crime (wuornos herself condemnatory of its predatory presence), but monster operates at least with a drive toward humanizing someone who was thoroughly violated and exploited by the press. i can't speak with authority on aileen's life but her death and the murders she committed weren't inevitable & are testaments to the violence of a society that operates without safety nets. my hope is aileen did truly get the chance to experience some moment of love--of care--no matter what preceded or followed.
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