In “Monday,” Argyris Papadimitropoulos takes the uncertainty that comes with exploring a new relationship and mines it for two hours as we watch a couple experience the highs, lows and everything in between of a new relationship. That logline feels too banal for the specific weirdness that marks Papadimitropoulos’ film, which leans into, and then resists, the tropes that have marked genre. In fact, “Monday” seems too slippery to easily fit into the genre of romance films, just like the couple at its centre.
Mickey and Chloe are two Americans living in Athens, and meet in the intoxicating heat of summer one Friday evening. She is flying back home the next day, but their chemistry is too obvious to ignore. So, they embark on a relationship. From that first meeting between the two, we keep waiting for the bottom to fall out. Papadimitropoulos recognises that any film tracing the development of a relationship is bound to be familiar in themes and plots, so “Monday” distinguishes itself by a dizzying ambivalence in tone and even in form. From the onset the chaotic nature of their pairing is the focus so we wait, expectantly and nervously, for the complications to set in. “Monday” becomes intriguing for the ways those complications are both expected and unexpected.
Papadimitropoulos’s conceit is presenting their burgeoning romance as a series of weekend whirlwinds as the screenplay (cowritten with Rob Hayes) connects the months-long relationship through a series of loosely connected weekends. It’s an ambitious approach. He introduces each sequence as a Friday in their lives, zipping through weeks with only occasional nods to the progression of time until in the final sequence we arrive at a Monday that comes with sudden impact. We intuit, from peripheral information, that time has gone and it’s here that Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough are so critical in their performances as Mickey and Chloe. We believe in the whirlwind nature of their romance as they etch out a believable chemistry from the onset. They’re balancing a difficult task. First, they must present Mickey and Chloe’s union as improbable. He is a jaded musician-turned-DJ, she is an immigration lawyer. But they also need to establish that these disparate people would have the kind of exhausting passion that would precipitate this kind of whirlwind romance. They achieve the balance. Gough vividly suggests and then explicates Chloe’s fears and anxieties in a performance that has to vary across emotional registers. Stan, playing the more consistently jaded Mickey, moves between fewer emotions but harnesses his typical charm into something sadder and more indecisive.
Papadimitropoulos avoids emotional stultification by establishing the Athens around Mickey and Chloe as a vibrant one beyond their relationship. Instead of working as a chamber-piece, “Monday” finds space for its entire cast beyond the couple at the centre. For such a straightforward romantic drama, Papadimitropoulos gets significant mileage from his ensemble cast. We meet various members of the couple’s lives and the best sequence is a disastrous house-warming party that is no less interesting when the camera leaves the couple. There’s a moment where Chloe introduces two strangers from London to precipitate a potential alliance. It does not work. It’s the kind of sharp awareness of observational cues that Papadimitropoulos mines to such good effect. Managing to achieve familiarity while avoiding triteness.
The varying Fridays – first meeting, moving in, house party, wedding, and on and on – take on the nature of successive short-films. It becomes a gamble in a way when the tonal through-line from one section to the next begins to blur. The first sequence is a breezy romp of a romantic comedy, the last sequence feels like a psychological drama. The juggling of tones might prove disorienting at first but it’s an ambitious gambit that establishes Papadimitropoulos’s awareness of the way that a relationship becomes fluid. Our identities are constructs. So, we understand how these two people can be manifestations of so many conflicting characters all at once. Napoleon Stratogiannakis’s editing is best in the final 20 minutes where a night out turns into a chaotic evening from hell. Christos Karamanis shoots Greece like a picaresque escape until the cracks begin to show and unpredictable breeziness gives way to awkward plateau and then stressful conclusions.
The film’s opening is a delirious sequence at a club. As Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ blazes over the speakers Mickey and Chloe are thrust together. Summer’s song makes an appearance at the film’s end at another club sequence, months into their relationship. Except this time its haunting refrain feels like a warning more than anything. It’s this kind of specific motif-making that makes “Monday” work. Papadimitropoulos has a clear-eyed awareness of this world and the people in it. The breezy insouciance of the first third, and the awkward lull of the second third are more convincing than the chaos of the film’s final act, but it’s an ambitious part of Papadimitropoulos’s heightening of the stakes that feel specific and intentional even when they feel occasionally improbable. There’s a final argument that I wish the film delved into more deeply, but then at the end “Monday” delivers a final shot of such unrelenting specificity that I cannot help but be compelled by Papadimitropoulos commitment to these characters. When that final Monday comes at the film’s end, it feels like a punch in the gut.
“Monday” is playing at TIFF as part of the Industry Selection sidebar of films screening to spark interest from buyers and global festival programmers.
