This movie by Hal Hartley is billed by IMDB in the genre Action / Comedy / Sci-Fi. I’m not so sure about the comedy or the sci-fi. There are some funny lines (like being sentenced to be a high school teacher) but they are very few and, although it does have visitors from an another planet, this could be interpreted as an analogy. I would call it a ‘speculative fiction’ drama along the lines of 1984 but it is not anywhere near that level of writing.
There’s a lot about this movie that just doesn’t make sense. There are analogies to everything here with little connectivity to take a viewer through them. Many have tried this alien-savior-among-us idea (The Day the Earth Stood Still, K-PAX, Starman, The man who fell to earth) but I recommend any of these over The Girl from Monday even that last one (what was Bowie thinking?)
Some Directors dig science fiction but lack the money and/or ingenuity to really build a believable future earth so they simply film today and call it the future. This can become lame very easily unless it’s intelligently done. Don’t look for that here. The cinematography looks very ‘film-school’ avant-garde with all the gratuitous violence, nudity and use of hand-held cameras that implies. That’s all that should be said.
Not worth seeing unless you are a Hal Hartley fan.
Golbing 