Last at Venice Film Festival five years ago with Hannah, Andrea Pallaoro’s return is marked by Monica, in which the Italian filmmaker withholds narrative information from the audience whilst playing with colour to paint a painful, intimate portrait of a transgender woman seeking closure from familial rejection in her youth.
Transgender actress Trace Lysette stars as the title character, drawing the audience through a journey of abandonment, forgiveness and raw emotion as she returns to the Midwest for the first time in two decades to look after her ailing mother Eugenia (played by Patricia Clarkson).
“The main impulse behind this film was the need to explore the emotional psychological state of mind that results from abandonment,” Pallaoro says. “I felt the need to do that more by illustrating foreboding and consequences, than actually telling the story.”
As part of this process, Pallaoro explores a narrative trajectory that presents viewers with more questions than answers, allowing them to construct their own interpretation of the events that unfold on screen.
“The relationship between what we share [on screen] and what we withhold is a delicate one, and it’s crucial to the film which is a dance with the spectator to get them interested enough to connect their own dots and do their own journey,” says the director, who co-wrote the script with Orlando Tirado – his collaborator on all of his screen projects to date, including Hannah, another intimate portrait of a woman (played by Charlotte Rampling) in painful personal circumstances, and his 2013 debut feature Medeas.
Pallaoro first sent Lysette the script for Monica in 2016, when he went into production with Hannah, and she stayed attached as the filmmaker attempted to raise the finance.
“We met towards the end of the audition process of Monica. It was a very long process as I met over 30 candidates. I left the meeting so inspired, feeling we had found the person we were looking for that could embody and play the emotional range of this character,” Pallaoro says.
“It was a very, very long relationship even though we didn’t meet in the intermitting years.”
“We had this courtship that was going on for quite a few of years,” adds Lysette, who came out as transgender with her 2014 debut role as yoga teacher Shea on Amazon’s five-season Transparent series.
More recently, Lysette starred in Hustlers with Jennifer Lopez, Cardi B and Constance Wu, after playing a series of non-transgender roles in her earlier career.
“Within the story is the message that it’s important to cherish whatever time you have left with people that are important to us, and to find ways of burying the hatchet and spending whatever time there is in the space of love, and not resentment and anger,” Lysette says.
“Outside of the film it’s important to acknowledge it is very rare to see a trans character at the centre of a film.”
As part of the process Monica battles to heal the wounds of her past and identify her own path towards acceptance and forgiveness in the face of a mother who appears not to recognise her.
“I understood the need to tell this story and to explore this character after my mum was diagnosed with a degenerative disease,” Pallaoro says. “That, coupled with the experience of a few friends of mine, one in particular, and how I saw myself through her and the experience she was going through forced the need onto me to tell this story.”
“The film also conveys a message about the trans talent that is out there that has put in the work and is ready for more and for the fruitful careers that offer a little more freedom,” Lysette adds.
Monica was shot during the course of six challenging weeks in the summer heat of Cincinnati, Ohio.
“I poured everything I had in my soul into Monica and into the film, into every take. Even the scenes that didn’t have much action had a lot in terms of what was going on in Monica’s head, and I wanted to do the best that I could,” says Lysette.
“The most challenging thing for me were the 16-hour days, back-to-back, and being in almost every single scene. The shoot was a test of my endurance.”
The last time Pallaoro was in Venice with Hannah, Rampling won the Volpi Cup for best actress, and Lysette, Clarkson and Adriana Barraza, who plays Eugenia’s carer, all deliver strong performances in Monica.
While some buyers have been invited to screenings ahead of the festival, Pallaoro says his film’s journey “will start in Venice” where it is playing in the main competition. The Exchange is on board for international sales.
The film is produced by Pallaoro, Gina Resnick, Christina Dow and Eleonora Granata Jenkinson, and co-produced by Marina Marzotto, Mattia Oddone, Riccardo di Pasquale, Gabriele Oricchio, Antonio Adinolfi and Giorgia Lo Savio.
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