Trace Lysette and Patricia Clarkson co-star in Italian filmmaker Andrea Pallaoro's (Hannah) spare, sensitive drama about a trans woman who returns home to care for her estranged mother. At a young age, Monica (Lysette) was kicked out of her home by her mother Eugenia (Clarkson). Now she lives alone, working as a masseuse by day and a video sex worker by night, stoically enduring the indignities of other people's interest in her, brushing off harassers, and navigating the pain of an absentee lover. Then her sister-in-law Laura (Emily Browning) invites Monica home to Cincinnati to visit her ailing mother, but when she gets there, Eugenia no longer knows who she is. Screened at the Venice Film Festival this year, where Lysette received a standing ovation for her restrained, magnetic performance, Monica is a beautifully realised slow-burn drama depicting two characters mired in layers of complicated feeling as they find their way toward reconciliation.
