Girl Week 2017: What Happened to Monday

Girl Week 2017 is finally here! This is the week dedicated to talking about films with female protagonists. Since it's Monday, I decided to kick off the festivities with a movie about Monday. Sort of. It's really about a girl named Monday. Let's get to it.

Directed by Tommy Wirkola.

2017. Rated TV-MA, 123 minutes.

Cast:

Noomi Rapace

Clara Ready

Glenn Close

Willem Dafoe

Marwan Kenzari

Pål Sverre Hagen

Tomiwa Edun

Right now, we live in a world some complain is overpopulated. About a quarter-century from now, overpopulation is an undeniable fact. It's so bad that something called the Child Allocation Bureau is created and strictly enforces its law stating that families cannot have more than one child. When I say strictly, I mean it. When a mother has a multiple birth, all but the oldest child are cryogenically frozen with the promise that they'll be awakened when the world solves this most pressing of problems. We're given this information as we meet Karen Settman in the midst of giving birth to identical female septuplets. Complications cause her to die during the process leaving her dad Terrence (Dafoe) to smuggle all seven bundles of joy out of the hospital and raise them in secret. Instead of naming them Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey like I would have, he chooses to name each one after a day of the week. With some flashbacks to their upbringing mixed in, we eventually move forward another thirty years to 2073 when the girls are adults, living together, and fiercely clinging to the rule that none of them can ever be in public at the same time as another. Things change when the always dependable Monday doesn't make it home from work. Things really hit the fan when the rest of the girls realize the Bureau is on to them.

That premise is all sorts of intriguing and hooks you right from the start. At first, we wonder how Terrence is going to pull this trick off. It would be tough enough with just twins, but seven babies seems like too tall a feat. That he does it is never in question, so no spoiler there. What amazes us is the lengths to which he went to keep up the ruse. This includes one particular act I'm sure 99.999 percent of us could not commit. As cruel as it may seem to us, we realize it's necessary for the mission of keeping them together, under his care as children, and able to navigate the world as adults. It also lets us know that the stakes are high. Our intrigue continues not because of their strategy of each of them only going out in public on the day they're named for, but because of how this affects them. Seven different women, with seven different personalities have effectively jailed themselves and only breathe outside air once a week. The frustration of such a situation are real.

The dynamics of the relationships in their household might make an interesting film on its own, but would more likely result in something that fizzles out as it devolves into melodrama. Thankfully, we have the Child Allocation Bureau. Because of them, the film has to make the transition into being an action flick. It does this quicker than I make it sound. And it's a glorious transition. For a stretch, we get a series of violent chase scenes. They're well-executed, bloody, and never let us fall into the slumber of thinking these women are invincible.

Narratively, the sisters are still frustrated, but the reason changes. It is also compounded with completely justified angst on their part. For us, this means tension because we already feel that their lives are genuinely on the line. Aiding the cause is Glenn Close as our villain, Nicolette Cayman. She heads the bureau and has higher political aspirations. In many ways, it's a reprisal of her role as Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmations. She has a maniacal obsession with gathering up all of a certain item, the Settman girls in this case, and will stop at nothing to have them. Fittingly, she gives a similar kind of cackling evil performance. It's dialed down a notch or two, but still works in her capable hands.

More capable hands handle the most important roles, that of the sisters. Clara Read takes on the task of playing the girls as children. She does an excellent job of showing us the girls as they are learning how to survive, and just coming to understand why they need this knowledge. The directing and the writing, however, do a good job of not showing us too much of her. It's enough to lay the foundation for the film. Noomi Rapace erects the house by masterfully making us believe that she is seven different women. She furnishes each with personalities and idiosyncracies all their own. Soon enough, we're able to tell them apart without being told. She also pulls off the physicality required to play several of the sisters, making the action scenes work. Of course, there is a technical aspect to her work, and it all comes together perfectly. We never see the seams in the screen when the sisters are on the screen together, which is often. Also, their hair and makeup is done in a way that suits each character. This helps us enjoy the film by getting us invested in them as individuals and as a collective.

I hadn't even heard of this film until coming across a few reviews of it in the blogosphere. They were all positive, but warned this isn't for everyone. That sentiment was enough to make me seek it out. Well, I didn't seek that hard, it's on Netflix. Still, I made sure I sat my tushy down to watch this one. When I was done, I wasn't sure what they were talking about because I loved it. It's got a great premise that leads us into great action, and all of it is performed excellently by Rapace. Then I looked up its score on rottentomatoes.com and saw that it had a disappointing fifty-eight percent. Once again, that puts me in the position of going to bat for a film people aren't too keen on. From what I gather, it seems most critics feel it didn't quite live up to the potential of that premise. I disagree. It delivered the goods it promised me.

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Now, I don't save all my reviews of female-led films for this week. Since I watch what I think is a good number of them, that would be impossible. Click below for some of those.

Wonder Woman

Hidden Figures

Ghost in the Shell

Gerald's Game

The Eyes of My Mother

Arrival