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Monster'

A film about one of America's most notorious female serial killers framed as a lesbian romance? It may sound implausible, but writer and director Patty Jenkins, with the help of an exceptional performance by Charlize Theron, makes it work.
Aileen Wuornos was executed in 2002 in Florida for the confessed murder of seven men. After her arrest she claimed she killed the men in self-defense after they had raped her, though she later recanted this statement. Her story is a sordid and fascinating one and has local roots. Wuornos lived in Troy as an adolescent, dropping out of Troy High School in 1970 after her freshman year to move to the Sunshine State. She started working as a prostitute in her teens.
Charlize Theron has already been nominated for a slew of awards, including a Golden Globe, for her portrayal of Wuornos. She's on the cover of the Jan. 9 issue of Entertainment Weekly in which they predict the nominees for the Oscars and name her as a likely contender. As well she should be.
Never mind that she put on 30 pounds to play the role or that make-up artists worked overtime to make her look as much like Wuornos as possible (and she's a close match). It was Theron's psychological portrayal, the barely concealed hostility and tension of a woman on the brink of self-destruction and over the brink of madness that makes her performance so outstanding. Theron reels us into this woman and it is hard to decide whether to detest or pity her.
Less convincing is Christina Ricci as Selby, based on Wuornos' real-life girlfriend Tyria Moore, who she was with during her killing spree. Ricci is well known for playing detached and manipulative characters, and to some extent that works well here considering the dynamics of the real-life couple.
Selby and Aileen meet in a gay bar when Selby hits on, and is initially rebuffed by, Aileen. It is difficult to understand why Selby approaches Aileen in the first place. In the film, Selby is a young woman from a well to do fundamentalist family sent away in order to cure her homosexual urges. She looks like a clean-cut seventeen year old (though she is supposed to be of age), while Aileen looks, well, pretty much what you might imagine a drug-addicted, cigarette smoking, homicidal prostitute to look like. They are an odd match, which makes the viewer have to work to buy their relationship. It is hard to believe that the real "Selby" was so fresh-faced and innocent looking. Indeed, in an account on the Court TV web site, Selby's real-life counter part is described as having, "strawberry red hair, freckled face and a stocky build."
Although Theron and Ricci's love relationship is, for the most part, believable and at times touching and tender, it is carried in large part by Theron who could have probably had the same effect paired with a crash test dummy. That isn't to say that Ricci's performance is poor. It isn't. However, Theron is a tough act to follow and Ricci doesn't quite measure up.
The lesbian aspect of the film is prominent and Aileen's love for Selby is used as the catalyst for the murders and why they continue. Desperately wanting a comfortable life for herself and Selby, she tries with no success to get a "real" job. The scenes of Wuornos in second-hand clothes interviewing for secretary jobs she is clearly less than qualified for are heartbreakingly sad. When she can't make it in the "real world" and Selby's nagging and complaining escalate, she goes back to prostitution and, as a result, murder.
Wuornos isn't portrayed as someone who killed because she was a lesbian (and in any case, most accounts say Wuornos was bisexual). She is portrayed as a woman desperate for love and willing to do anything to keep the love she unexpectedly finds in Selby. With the first murder it is not hard to buy the self-defense plea. But by the second and third and so on it becomes obvious that Wuornos is no longer living in reality as her justification for the killings gets more and more strange and unbelievable.
How closely the film follows the real-life story and circumstances of the Wuornos case I am not sure. The film does not seek to make Wuornos a martyr or a victim, nor does it try to demonize her as a "Monster." Instead "Monster" allows us a glimpse into a life besieged by tragic circumstance in a society that does everything it can to make people like Aileen Wuornos invisible. It is a choice we make at our peril, for once violence is sown, the reaper always comes.

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