Monster film review

certificate_18

MONSTER

Even in America's violent culture female serial killers are rare. It's why Aileen Wuornos' case has generated so much interest including several books, two documentaries and now a feature film. Wuornos murdered seven men during the eighties and nineties before being executed in 2002. In Monster, writer and director Patty Jenkins focuses on the final chapters in Wuornos' life, when she meets up with Selby Wall (Christina Ricci) and embarks on her killing spree. The result is an unremarkable film destined to achieve wider acclaim by dint of a remarkable performance by Charlize Theron in the title role.

Powerful enough to garner an Oscar nomination, Theron's portrayal is perhaps less commendable for its subtlety than the transmogrification she's undergone. Through the addition of a lot of weight and a little make-up, Theron is all but unrecognizable. And while it's impossible not to marvel at her commitment and skill, it's unfortunate Theron's talents were not matched by the script which offers only a very cursory glimpse into the mind and life of such an extraordinary woman.

There are plenty of women who have, through any number of reasons, developed a hatred of men, but exactly what it was that triggered Wuornos to cross over some previously unbroken line and become regarded as America's first female serial killer is never satisfactorily explored in Monster. There's a brief opening sequence with clips of a youthful Wuornos degrading herself in an attempt to gain attention and affection, but by the time we first meet her as an adult she's already the volatile, angry time bomb just waiting to go off.

A tough talking and hard drinking 28-year-old prostitute, Wuornos is down to her last five bucks when she meets the 18-year-old Selby in a gay bar. Though professing to be straight nevertheless she accepts the advances of the naïve and impressionable teenager. Selby herself is struggling to find her own identity in the face of her parents' rejection of her lesbianism. Their desperate quest for affection causes the two contrasting women to launch their ill-fated relationship.

In her efforts to raise money and provide the two lovers with a home, Wuornos goes back to the streets, but when one punter turns violent, she kills him in self- defence. It's a turning point in a life marked by constant abuse at the hands of men and one from which she never turns back.