Andrea Pallaoro’s Tale of Trans Alienation
After supporting turns in Transparent and Hustlers, Trace Lysette plays the lead as a woman who returns home to care for her dying, long-estranged mother (Patricia Clarkson) in Andrea Pallaoro’s Venice competition entry Monica.
As in his previous movies, Medeas and Hannah, the director (collaborating with writing partner Orlando Tirado) tries to wring tension from visual and narrative austerity — a mostly static camera, deliberate pacing and parsimoniously doled out bits of backstory. But Hannah starred Charlotte Rampling, and Medeas was imbued with an atmospheric horror.
There’s effort to generate suspense as to whether Clarkson’s cancer-stricken Eugenia, slipping in and out of lucidity, recognizes Monica as the person who was her son.
The film contains he usual themes of fraught homecoming, terminally ill mother, aggrieved LGBTQ child, but Pallaoro fails to provide anything surprising or insightful.
