Bergorks
If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
Mike Hardy
Just did not like this movie, or anything about it. I don't mean to be rude but Susie Porter is utterly miscast and completely unbelievable as a "private detective" (c'mon). She is also physically repulsive (makes me wonder how she ever made it in acting) literally hard to watch on film. Mcgillis' acting performance (and looks) are slightly better but I think in truth she made this film just to be controversial and maybe revive her dying career. Sex scenes are also poor and the films climax plain lame. A movie just full of ugly lesbians and no backbone.Give it a miss!!
raymond-15
I could not find anything interesting in this film. Prose and poetry divided into chapter headings and dished up as an experimental film failed as a piece of entertainment. Let it be a lesson to other film makers.Don't be misled by the title. The writer chose the title before she wrote the book because she rather liked the Japanese haiku of that name. Believe me, there are no monkeys or masks, but after due consideration they might have livened up the film.The sex scenes were passable but with little delicacy. The writer said she had hoped for a more grubby presentation of those scenes. I could not see much point in the scene where the woman walks into a room with her panties off. Do lesbians like to advertise their pubic hair? On the positive side the cinema photography was excellent. Glimpses of Sydney harbour and its famous bridge put me in a great mood anticipating what beautiful scenes might follow. Alas! What a strange mixture.In one of the final scenes we see a notice warning people to take care because the Sydney Harbour rocks are slippery. I waited in trepidation because i was sure something terrible was about to take place. But no! We hear a man addressing a lesbian investigator ...."Thank you for making love to my wife; you sure put a light in her eyes".I'd be surprised to learn if a film like this could prove to be a profitable venture. My recommendation: AVOID!
alistairc_2000
I got this drivel for £0.33.This is a novel attempt at making a movie in the same way a poet makes a poem. The movie revolves around the disappearance of a vulgar female sluttish poet. Instead of making a crime thriller the director has made a new wave lesbian poetry thriller. Unfortunately this movie does not work as a lesbian romp. Nor does it work as a crime thriller only leaving the poetry.Kelly McGillis looks old in this movie. She is rather underused in this movie which is a shame as when she gets to act the movie starts to pick up briefly. Her co actress really should not do nudes and is pretty ugly. Also is is not the greatest actress but as this movie is dire perhaps this is not the best advert for her acting abilities.On a plus side the music is good and the cinematography is great in parts. These are not enough to pick up this really dully movie.
jay_thompson680
Dorothy Porter's book "The Monkey's Mask" was a groundbreaker on numerous levels. The text was a novel constructed from poetic verse ("is it a novel or a bloody long poem"? one commentator asked). Furthermore, Porter took a harboiled detective/ noir narrative and relocated it from the streets of NY or LA to seamy inner-city Sydney. Where once we had misogynist male gumshoes(i.e. Sam Spade), Porter gave us Jill Fitzpatrick, a female detective who was also - and proudly - a lesbian.So how does it translate to film? Very interestingly, indeed.The story (for those unfamiliar) entails Jill investigating the disappearance and subsequent murder of Mickey Norris, a young Uni student whose amateurish poetry is laced with sex and death. Jill's investigation leads her into Sydney's incestuous poetry scene, and particularly into the bed of Diana Maitland, Jill's duplicituous lecturer. And that's where trouble starts ...Susie Porter and Kelly McGillis are brilliant as Jill and Diana respectively. There is more emphasis given here to the sexual side of their relationship than there was in Porter's text, and some of the sex scenes do, alas, border on fetishistic.However, I was fascinated by the way their relationship was mediated by a whole range of other factors. There is class: Diana is an uber-wealthy city dweller who dines at Darling Harbour, while Jill is a working-class woman living in a dingy caravan on Sydney's exclusive North Shore. Also, Diana is entwined in two seedy 'scenes': the poetry world, and the world of English/cultural studies academia. The seamy, incestuous, inhumane side of academia has been explored in films as diverse as Hitchcock's 'Rope' (which TMM bears a resemblance to stylistically- and that also had homosexuality as a theme) to the 1970s horror film 'Bloodsuckers' (an appropriate title for Diana). In The Monkey's Mask, Diana talks down about her students (the women in her class love 'victim poetry', apparently). When Jill tells her of Mickey's gruesome murder, Diana is more excited over her latest academic grant!In support, Marton Csokas was brilliant as Diana's 'kept man' Nick. He reminded me of Vincent Price's 'kept man'/ playboy in the 1944 noir classic 'Laura'. Unfortunately, the rest of the supporting cast are under-used. As Jill's father, Chris Winwood is given little to do bar totter around with a whisky bottle. Then there is the talented Deborah Mailman, wasted in a thinly-sketched role as Jill's best friend (the most she is given to do is 'come onto' her friend during a time of grief, and that - as another commentator suggested - suggests a dubious link between lesbians and sexual voraciousness. This is a link that is made absolutely concrete in Diana's character, whose evil is - in the film - largely attributed to her sexual appetite).Also, the movie's conclusion was too neat and polished, given all the ambiguity and uncertainty that preceded it. The ending of Porter's book wasn't nearly as cut-and-dried.And what was the point of Jill's closing line: "Forget the bitch"? Porter didn't mention that. Was its inclusion to comfort the (conservative, hetero, etc) viewer that the dangerous dyke relationship is over, and we can all sleep nice and easy. Worrying stuff, indeed.Having said that,though, Lang's 'The Monkey's Mask' is an interesting contributionto the noir genre. Stylish and sensual, with some great chemistry between the leads, it is intelligent entertainment that deserves a look.
