MONSTER (2003)

Cast

Plot

Aileen 'Lee' Wournos had had enough of hooking and enough of life when she met Selby Wall in a Florida bar in 1989. She took Selby to be her saviour, her new reason to fight and to live. But in the hours before their second date Lee is forced to literally fight to live. As writer/director Patty Jenkins takes us on Lee's journey from kill to kill we find her motives to be bound up in a complicated web of love, fear, revenge, desperation, defence and loathing. Christina Ricci conveys the naively manipulative and infuriatingly irresponsible Selby Wall, who's attention and affection convince Lee that she's at last found love, albeit in the most unexpected of places. Ricci's entire performance leads naturally to the climax of the film: a heartbreakingly brief courtroom scene. To be convinced of the integrity of Theron's Oscar winning performance one need only watch Nick Broomfield's documentary 'Aileen'. The makeup, the weight and her study of Wuornos are all beautifully crafted into a spectacular portrayl of a tragic woman whose path in life, from its abusive outset, could have only ended in the way that it did. Like 'Badlands' and 'Natural Born Killers' before it, Monster is a love affair with murder. And it was true.