Directed by Argyris Papadimitropoulos
Written by Argyris Papadimitropoulos and Rob Hayes
Starring Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough
1 hour 56 minutes
Rated R - nudity, sex, language, drug use
Available digitally April 16

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

Monday is a film that assumes will be invested in two underdeveloped characters who meet and fall in love simply because they live in a Pretty Place. That Pretty Place is Athens, Greece. Filmed in Athens, Monday starts like a condensed travel romance in the vein of Before Sunrise without the depth. While DJ’ing for a party, Mickey (Sebastian Stan) is shoved into the path of Chloe (Denise Gough), at the insistence of his friend. Drunk or high or simply wrapped up in the moment, Chloe and Mickey instantly make out and dance and wake up the next morning naked on the beach. How two people over 35 can party all night and not wake up screaming in pain because of what sleeping on the ground did to their backs I do not know.

Over the next day they walk around Athens, have more sex, try to track down Chloe’s purse, and get to know each other in superficial ways. Mickey’s been in Athens for seven years, he’s a musician, and he played in a band in New York. Chloe is an immigration lawyer who has been living in Athens for a year and a half. Mickey is, expectedly, less grounded and pragmatic than Chloe, but it’s not something the film really explores. Like many films in a Pretty Place, it just wants to coast on moving characters from location to location so you can see what a great place it is and hey maybe I should travel there. Sometimes this formula can work really well, like in The August Virgin. But the main character in The August Virgin moved from scene to scene with purpose. Here it’s more like a series of dull conversations and party scenes with insufferable people.

Monday includes recurring title cards which say “FRIDAY,” and it may have been called “Friday” except, well, we already have a movie called Friday. Mickey and Chloe meet on a Friday, have a weekend fling, and Mickey stops her at the airport when she plans to fly back to the states. But this is far from the romance of “Baby, you’re gonna miss that plane.” These people never seem like more than two dimensional caricatures, and unlikable ones at that. They’re 40-year-olds partying like 25-year-olds. The conflicts are lazy; Mickey has a son, Hector, who evidently means the world to him but he’s never shown. Chloe is trying to dodge a destructive ex, Christos (Andreas Konstantinou), essentially a Disney villain. As soon as we see Chloe rushing to the bathroom to vomit, we can anticipate the series of events that occur and the melodrama that ensues.

The idea of a Monday following Friday doesn’t come until close to the end when there’s actually something at stake, a Monday appointment they cannot miss. It doesn’t make for a very engaging, or even cohesive, story to visit these characters every Friday. Is it every week? We see them have sex, then we see them move in. Is it the next day? Chloe brags about her expensive designer couch, but since it’s too heavy to carry up the stairs to Mickey’s place, they torch it on fire for some reason and have a block party. Like you do. It’s unclear what draws these do together aside from their desire to have lots of public sex. I like Sebastian Stan as an actor, and I could potentially like Denise Gough. But the script and the dialogue doesn’t do either of these people any favors. “What happened to us?” Chloe cries. The drama is false and unearned. By the end of Monday I was just glad to be released of spending any more time with these unpleasant, selfish, and childish people.