Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon | Dir: Ana Lily Amirpour | ★ ★ ★ ★
Mona Lisa Lee (Jeon Jong-seo) is the young lady with the mystical smile in Iranian-American writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour’s new film. Mona was born in Korea, and it is uncertain how she got to America, but after many foster fails, she has spent the last ten of her 22 years in a secure unit for “mentally insane” adolescents.
As the blood moon rises on a busy night in New Orleans’ French Quarter, Mona is in the centre of a padded cell, drooling and trussed up a straight jacket. Totally dispossessed of any control over her life, she finally uses her telepathic powers to manage a bloody escape from the mental institution.
Managing to avoid police who are trying to find her, but without any money and still wearing the dangling straight jacket, she is hungry and finding the neon-saturated chaos of the outside world difficult to navigate.
The outskirts of the city are inhabited by “degenerates, drunks and nut jobs” but there a couple of kind souls who offer help. Aging stripper Bonny Bells (Kate Hudson at her trashy best), who lives with her young son, offers her some clothes, food and a place to sleep.
As Mona soaks in the horrors of the world through late-night television, it is eleven year-old Charlie (Evan Whitten) who sees that his mother is exploiting her to get money out of all the pricks she has to deal with.
With so many people who want to take advantage of her, how is Mona going to work out who is helping her and who is just helping themselves?
While the intensely hypnotic synth soundtrack pulses and the neon lights throb relentlessly in this horror thriller with cutting dark humour, Amirpour makes sure that all the self-centred desperadoes and bullies suffer. Mona doesn’t find many answers to her dilemmas but she does manage to survive and those around her have the chance to make their lives better.
Lezly Herbert
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