Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
Writer: Ana Lily Amirpour
Stars: Kate Hudson, Jeon Jong-seo, Craig Robinson, Ed Skrein
“Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” is the third feature by the writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour. It feels like a she’s taken a bit of ‘The Suicide Squad’ and ‘Stranger Things’ and smashed them together in a neon soaked world.
In “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon”, we follow Mona Lisa (Jong-seo Jun), a mental hospital patient with telekinetic abilities, whose broken out of an asylum. Along her escape, she meets the clever stripper-single mother Bonnie (Kate Hudson), whom Mona Lisa saves from a beat down. Mona Lisa Lee, who exerts a form of hypnotic mind control that can make her enemies slap themselves, stab themselves or put a bullet in their own knees.
Bonnie takes advantage of her new found friend, directing Mona Lisa to force strangers into making sizable A.T.M. withdrawals. There’s also a determined cop (Craig Robinson) on their tail, hoping to lock the both of them up.
The interactions between Jong-seo and child actor Evan Whitten are the highlights on this film. Whitten plays Bonnie’s neglected son Charlie, who bonds with Mona Lisa over feeling like an outcast. Mona Lisa and Charlie both strike up an unlikely friendship, but there bond works — Mona Lisa is an alien to outside worlds, Charlie feeling isolated also — and the way they confront hardships together is heart warming.
New Orleans plays a major role in this movie, highlighted as a promiscuous playground where anything and everything will happen. Both Kate Hudson and Jong-seo Juns deliver electrifying performances, portraying characters who may be categorised as perverse and trashy according to community standards. However, audiences will warm to them, their chance meeting ultimately leading to new beginnings and a whole new outlook on life and relationships.
‘Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon’ is in cinemas now.
Email: neill@outloudculture.com
