Charlize Theron won an Academy Award for her portrayal of notorious US female serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2003's Monster which is released on DVD on Monday 11th October. Bravely burrowing beneath the tabloid headlines about America’s first female serial killer—and the media’s sordid designation of Wuornos as an unrepentant monster—in the midst of the horrors and pathologies, first-time writer-director Patty Jenkins unearths an unlikely love story between two misfits. Nearing suicidal despair, Wuornos wanders into a Florida bar, where she meets Selby Wall (Christina Ricci), a young woman sent by her parents to live with an aunt in order to 'cure her homosexuality.' Wuornos—victim of a tragic, abusive upbringing—quickly falls in love, and clings to Selby like a life preserver. Unable to find a legitimate job but desperate to sustain her relationship with Selby, Wuornos continues working as a prostitute. When one of her johns turns violent, Wuornos shoots the man in self-defense; the first in her tragic string of killings. Shot in many of the actual locations where Wuornos committed her crimes between 1989-90, in its grittiness, verisimilitude, and hard-won empathy for its antihero, Monster is reminiscent of the great, iconoclastic American films of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Co-starring Bruce Dern, Monster succeeds as searing social commentary, road movie, and, most profoundly, as love story. Theron’s ferocious, fully-committed work—astounding physical transformation matched by unerring psychological acuity—is sure to surprise audiences familiar with her work, and in writer-director Jenkins, Monster heralds a major new filmmaking talent.
|
