The Monk

Hollywood Reporter

French director Dominik Moll charts a 17th-century Spanish monk's descent into evil with admirable restraint.

PARIS — Starring Vincent Cassel in a generously-budgeted adaptation of a classic gothic novel,Dominik Moll's The Monk -- only his fourth feature in nearly two decades -- arrives trailing high expectations. The presence of France's currently most bankable male lead and the promise of lurid content may well attract audiences at home and abroad, but ultimately the movie disappoints, falling between two stools and failing to convince either as spectacle or as a fable about religious obsession.

The story unravels the career of the Franciscan monk Ambrosio (Cassel) who, after being abandoned as a baby at the door of a monastery, is raised by the friars and becomes an accomplished preacher, admired for his rigor and irreproachable conduct. His troubles begin when a young novice is admitted to the community ostensibly “to be closer to God.” The newcomer wears a mask, explaining that he has been disfigured in a fire, but proves in reality to be a woman (Deborah Francois), an envoy of Satan bent on exposing Ambrosio to the temptations of the flesh. She succeeds so well that soon enough he has set his sights on Antonia (Joséphine Japy), a virtuous young woman who lives in a nearby castle with her mother Elvira (Catherine Michet) and is being courted by the earnest swain Lorenzo (Frédéric Noialle).

Set in 17th-century Spain, the movie is never less than handsomely mounted, alternating between the stark chiaroscuro of the interiors and the sun-drenched urban or desert-like exteriors of Catalonia. Moll has an eye for painterly compositions, in keeping with the high-mindedness of his intentions. His direction and Cassel's interpretation of Ambrosio's descent into evil are admirably restrained.

That is perhaps where the problem lies. Matthew Lewis's novel must have appeared sulphurous on its publication in 1796 -- indeed, it was banned for several years -- but for today's audiences the association of religion, sex and satanism has acquired a dated quality. Moll runs dutifully through the catalogue of gothic symbolism (ravens for ill omen, flames for sexual desire, gargoyles for grinning evil) but might have been better advised to go for the over-the-top baroque style favored by, for example, Ken Russell'sThe Devils, another tale of satanic mischief-making.

The screenplay, co-written by Moll with Anne-Louise Trividic, is at times labored and the gobbets of theological wisdom we're offered -- sample: Satan only has the power that we grant him -- ring hollow. The accomplished visual and technical specifics are sufficient to keep the spectator engaged until, around the hour-mark, it teeters into the ridiculous. Film buffs are left to wonder what the story might have become in the hands of a director with fully paid-up anti-clerical credentials such as Luis Buñuel, who did at one point write a script, with Jean-Claude Carriere, for a movie version that never made it into production.

RogerEbert

"The Monk" is an eccentric period melodrama with horror-flick overtones. Occasionally incoherent but never dull, the movie brims with weird imagery: figures in peaked hoods scurrying across windswept plains, nuns in opaque white veils, a bouquet rapidly wilting and then bursting into blue flames, a baby being pecked by crows. At one point, a group of men march past the camera. They are wearing crowns of candles on their heads; drips of hardened wax cover their shoulders.

Directed and co-written by Dominik Moll, a German-born French filmmaker best known for his clever thrillers ("With A Friend Like Harry," "Lemming"), "The Monk" stars Vincent Cassel as Ambrosio, a Capuchin friar with an ominous hand-shaped birthmark on his shoulder.

Abandoned as a newborn on the steps of a monastery, Ambrosio was raised to be a model monk: pious, perceptive, sensible. A skilled confessor and orator, he is widely admired by his Capuchin brothers and by the townspeople who come to hear his sermons. Cassel gives the character a credible holier-than-thou confidence. He wears a beard that effectively covers half of his face, drawing attention away from his mouth and on to his pensive eyes.

The story of "The Monk" — adapted from Matthew Lewis' influential-though-hardly-classic 1796 novel — is the story of Ambrosio's descent into sin and madness. It's lurid, silly, strange stuff — murder, incest, pacts with the devil — so it should come as no surprise that Lewis' novel was a Surrealist favorite. Luis Bunuel even tried to make it into a movie. Though Bunuel never managed to get his version financed, the Surrealist critic and filmmaker Ado Kyrou eventually made an interesting film — starring spaghetti Western icon Franco Nero, of all people — based on Bunuel's script.

Moll's version flirts with Surrealism without ever quite giving the impression that it's a work of art; his take on "The Monk" is, first and foremost, a classy B-movie, keen to offer Gothic atmosphere, nudity, and mild shocks. In some ways, it resembles a Hammer horror flick (think "Curse of Frankenstein" or the Christopher Lee "Dracula") — except that the Hammer movies were visually opulent and "The Monk" is often austere and grayish. Interiors are dim and shadowy, which fits the 16th century setting. The costuming isn't gaudy or over-stylized. During its first 15 or so minutes, it would be easy to mistake "The Monk" for a restrained religious drama.

At around the 15-minute mark, however, Ambrosio recounts a dream — a vision of a woman in red who doesn't show her face — to a fellow monk, and the movie effectively enters a dream state which it never leaves. Every subsequent scene inches the dream further and further into nightmare. The visuals become more adventurous; Moll plays around with superimposed images, diffuse light, silent-movie-style iris shots, and even throws in a few theatrical lighting tricks — a spotlight pointing out a character in a crowd, for instance.

Oddly, as "The Monk" becomes more imaginative, its plot — a lot of twisty intrigue involving a masked leper who lives at the monastery and a young aristocrat's courtship of a woman who admires Ambrosio — becomes less engaging. By the end, it's hard to care for Ambrosio or his fall from grace; he has been marginalized by the imagery.

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