In a revelatory performance, Charlize Theron stars in the shocking and
moving true-life story of Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute executed last
year in Florida after being convicted of murdering six men. While Wuornos
confessed to the six murders, including a policeman, she claimed to
have killed only in self-defense, resisting violent assaults while working
as a prostitute.
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.
