Review by Jane Freebury
A highway prostitute who in the late 1980s became a serial killer is now the subject of three films. British filmmaker Nick Broomfield made two documentaries about Aileen Wuornos over the course of her 12-year imprisonment on death row, and now writer/director Patty Jenkins’ film – and Charlize Theron’s Oscar – has brought the desperately sad story of the woman’s life into the mainstream, some 16 months after she was executed in a Florida prison.
How did Wuornos, one of life’s victims, become so compelling for these filmmakers? They would have known she was the daughter of teenage parents, adopted by her grandparents as an infant, and became a mother herself before age 14 before she began to work the streets full-time.
This unfortunate early life featuring a pretty little blonde is summed up briefly, before the movie turns to Aileen, still a hooker and in her early thirties, now contemplating suicide. In a chance visit to a gay bar, she meets a much younger woman, Selby (Christina Ricci), who is fascinated by the bedraggled, emotionally wounded, tough talking older woman.
Is this another crime duo on the run? Another Natural Born Killers or Thelma and Louise? Not exactly. It’s the story of Aileen and Selby’s time together as lovers, when Aileen took on the role of bread winner and murdered her clients and stole their cars and cash.
Monster is simply told in an unobtrusive style that gives way to two astonishing performances. Patty Jenkins’ screenplay has drawn very heavily on Wuornos’ own point of view (that concerns me a bit), sourcing her thousands of letters, excerpts of which we hear in voice-over.
It’s all so well handled, however, from the scene where Aileen lashes out at the ‘dyke’ buying her a drink, to the tears she sheds as they part at a bus stop. Theron is amazing throughout (forget the prosthetics!) as the swaggering and vulnerable Aileen, and it’s hard to think of another recent performance by a female actor that quite comes near it. Ricci is very good too.
When Aileen throws us a look over her shoulder as she walks to her death, it’s an accusatory look at the society that brought her to this. The fatuous clichés we hear on the voice-over have finally let her down.
In a capsule: Charlize Theron is totally deserving of her Oscar in this desperately sad story of a hooker who pays a heavy debt to society.
4 stars