The Monkey's Mask

AU [R]18+

DIR:
Samantha Lang

STARS:
Susie Porter, Kelly McGillis

SCREENPLAY:
Anne Kennedy

DOP:
Garry Phillips

EDITOR:
Dany Cooper

MUSIC:
Andrew Kotatko, Antony Partos, Single Gun Theory

RUNNING TIME:
90 min

AUSTRALIAN RELEASE:
May 10 2001

THE MONKEY'S MASK opens with Mickey, a sweet faced and vaguely gothic looking young woman (ABBIE CORNISH) getting up to read a vaguely nasty and pornographic poem at a pub poetry night. After Mickey goes missing, her wealthy parents hire Jill (SUSIE PORTER), a private detective living a self imposed exile in the mountains outside Sydney. Jill welcomes the job as the thick mists and thick minds of the mountains are starting to grate, not to mention the celibacy that goes with exile.

After talking to Mickey's parents, one of Jill's first ports of call is to the girl's poetry lecturer, Diana (KELLY MCGILLIS). For Jill, it is lust at first sight, Diana seriously distracts Jill from the investigation. Actually it doesn't seem to take much to distract Jill, even the investigation seems like a distraction from her boredom.

Based on Dorothy Porter's detective novel written in verse, THE MONKEY'S MASK is if nothing else, an interesting filmic exercise. The film has done well on the festival circuit, and I am not at all surprised, as it has that certain pretentious charm that stands out when you are caught in the brain dead blur of a film festival.

Samantha Lang's composition of the love/sex scenes between Jill and Diana resembles French Salon paintings of the late 1800's, sex rendered sexless, a bit of lingering soft core lesbian porn masquerading as art. Personally I wished I had access to a fast forward button (sorry, but do we really need to see Porter naked again?). Lang seems to have tried very hard to be arty and poetic, but for my money, her film is plodding, old fashioned and there doesn't seem to be enough story to fill out 90 minutes of film. MASK screams out for an energetic beat, be it Be Bop, Acid jazz or Electronic Doof, it could have been an interesting poetic contemporary take on Film Noir or classic pulp. It needed to get down and dirty with more mystery, tension, false leads and a feeling of real danger! It needed the energy of a really kicking poetry slam! Damn it! This could have been a really sexy and exciting film! But I am here to review the film it is, not what it could have been, and while not a bad film, THE MONKEY'S MASK ranks as being most ordinary and long winded. My advice, worth a look, but don't expect too much.

  Reviewed by Cyndy Kitt Vogelsang for Filmnet, 23 April 2001

This page is a Cyndy Kitt Production
Last edited 17 May 2001