Monday’s child is fair of face…
What Happened to Monday? Netflix, 2017
Genre: Action & Adventure, Drama, Mystery & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Directed By: Tommy Wirkola
Written By: Max Botkin, Kerry Williamson
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Glenn Close, Willem Dafoe, Marwan Kenzari
It’s nearly impossible to watch “What Happened to Monday?” (AKA “Seven Sisters”) without thinking of Tatiana Maslany in “Orphan Black.” In that Canadian SF series, Maslany played seven major characters, plus five minor ones, an acting tour de force.
In Monday, Noomi Rapace plays seven sisters (Monday through Sunday) in a world that forbids more than one child per couple. The government bureau in charge of overpopulation takes excess siblings (basically, anyone who IS a sibling) and flash freezes them for reawakening in a future when population pressure has eased. The seven live in a concealed set of rooms, each emerging on their eponymous days to live 1/7th of the life a successful businesswoman named Karen Settman. Then one of them doesn’t come home on a Monday evening, and the tale begins.
Rapace doesn’t have the nuance and depth of Maslany, but that’s an unfair criticism; Maslany had 40 hours of screen time to develop her characters, Rapace only two. For that reason, further comparisons are moot. Rapace makes the most of her two hours to strut and fret upon the stageset.
Glenn Close, as she often does, makes Nurse Ratched look like Gidget. She’s the head of the population bureau, an ambitious and ruthless politician. Willem Dafoe is the sometimes sinister father determined to keep his illegal daughters alive, and not above resorting to mutilating them so they will all match in appearance. Marwan Kenzari is a love interest to one of the daughters, unaware of her secret, and who works—where else?–but at the population bureau.
The movie is ambitious, and original, but tries to be too many genres all at once. It works well enough as a science fiction movie, with nice futuristic touches throughout. It’s a bit too formulaic to work well as a mystery, and relies too much on action sequences to work as a suspense film. But the acting by Rapace and her costars is excellent, and makes the movie worth spending a couple of hours with.
Now on Netflix.