Monica review

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/monica_2022 . I seriously had to write this after seeing this thing get 80%+ from critics and 90%+ from audiences.

So, I had a few hours to myself, and having a few hours to myself, I decided to take the time to consume media that I would otherwise have no chance at all to watch with my partners away. This generally means anime with voices my partners find annoying (this includes my cat’s favorite anime, Dungeon Meshi), or it means meandering, depressing art house think pieces. I took the time for the latter, and opted to watch Monica (2022), starring Trace Lysette. I’m going to just post a spoilery review of this two year old movie, but suffice it to say that I had mixed feelings about the whole thing if you decide to not read farther, and in particular, have trouble recommending it either for trans or cis audiences, even if I got something out of it. Of course, some of this may be characterized by 2024 having been probably the best year ever for trans film, with two feature movies, The People’s Joker, and I Saw the TV Glow both written and directed by trans women, and both just dead-on communicating our experience in deep (and very different from each other) ways. It’s hard to be happy with anything else after seeing that.

So, plot synopsis: We run into Monica driving from California to an unspecified area in the suburban midwest. She is distraught about an ex that she is on a break with, and keeps on calling him and leaving angry messages. She is also calling ahead to what we soon find out is her childhood home, where her brother and sister-in-law are taking care of her dying estranged mother. The mother is introduced to Monica as a hired caretaker, and the three of them, with the help of an assisted living nurse take care of the mother, Eugenia, as ups and downs of memory issues, medical care, and refusal of treatment flare up. Monica has a heart-to-heart with her brother, revealing that it was her mother that dumped her off on the streets, and learning that her brother always missed her. Monica engages with her brother’s children, one of whom the movie strongly implies is a future trans woman “him”self, in, amongst other places, a truly strange scene where the “boy” play-gives birth to a doll. Later, her mother has a turn for the worse, and there’s a heartfelt scene where it looks like Monica forgives her mother without really telling her mother who she is, only saying “there are so many things I’d like to tell you.” It concludes with Monica giving the “nephew” a pep talk before a school recital, and seeing her bonded and together with her birth family as they watch the star spangled banner get played.

Long time readers of this space probably will note that this author has some… feelings about trans women and family estrangement, and that she might have an interaction with the above story line, but let’s go.

So, let’s get on with a little bit of transfeminist theory. In Whipping Girl, Julia Serano talks about two media archetypes for trans women — the “pathetic” trope, which is communicated as extremely non-passing, hyper-emasculated, and generally helpless and harmless. This type of trans woman is an object of pity, and her presence is intended as a source of comedy or as a way for the primary characters of the movie at hand to show their openmindedness and graciousness. Think, The World According to Garp, TransParent, etc. The other main trope is the “predatory” trope. These trans women are depicted as *extremely* passing, often sensual, hyper-sexualized. They exist in the film to trick the cis male protagonist into fucking them, and thereby, they ruin him. This is most famously deployed in The Crying Game, and it’s parody in Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

Monica does not directly follow either of these tropes, largely because Lysette is definitely a breath of fresh air versus the typically cis people that are playing trans women in movies, her presence is a breath of fresh air. Similarly, we are spared the typical shots of makeup being applied, wigs being put on, and of the mechanics of transition. Also, thank fuck, we are saved a shock “wow a penis!” shot (I’m still upset about the version of this from Ace Ventura). Monica is well past having to learn how to perform femininity, and we aren’t tortured with that.

But, these tropes are sitting in the background of the art direction and the directors’ (Andrea Pallaoro) eye with nearly every scene, it’s just that he doesn’t know which trope this movie is written in. So, before we are even explicitly told Monica is trans, we see her in a shabby motel self-administering a subQ injection into her thigh like some sort of sad sack. Later on, when she has some downtime in the house, there’s a nearly completely gratiuitous scene where she’s camming and requesting some tips while reaching slightly off camera, only to be interrupted by her mother in crisis, in a way that the audience is *definitely* supposed to judge her for. Then, she’s going on hookup dates at bars, getting stood up, leaving screaming messages to men (rightly) calling them out for quizzing her about her body and then standing her up (again, i think we’re supposed to be judging her negatively for this, from the subtext of the shot), and then her opting to just find a trucker parked at the bar to hook up with in a semi-graphic sex scene. She’s continually calling her boyfriend and screaming at him, for the first half of the movie, we really do want to just see this unhinged hypersexualized person barely holding her life together…

Until her family fixes her. Caring for her mother, opening up to her brother, caring for her nieces and nephews gives Monica the home she always wanted. All of her problems with decades of estrangement and isolation and at least one stint of childhood homelessness? Well, they can just be FIXED with a month of family togetherness time. Old Monica and just open up to her brother, and engage with some kids, and encourage her brother to make up with his wife, and she’s a part of the fabric again, and she’s back to being fixed. Just another auntie.

So, I’m angrier at this movie upon writing this than I was on watching, in addition to there not being a real depiction of actual dialogue with the mother to earn this reconciliation, I’m finding myself pretty intensely upset with the idea of including trans women in the already toxic sexist trope of “well, domesticity is all you need to be fixed.” Ultimately, this story feels very much like the classic “fallen woman saved by the beauty of the home” with a trans spin on it. Watch at your peril. Again, though Trace Lysette is great, there are moments that feel quite real, but I can’t deal with the things that she’s asked to do, and the overall arc is too frustrating to ignore.