Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

raymond-15 I could not find anything interesting in this film. Prose and poetry divided into chapter headings and dished up as an experimental film failed as a piece of entertainment. Let it be a lesson to other film makers.Don't be misled by the title. The writer chose the title before she wrote the book because she rather liked the Japanese haiku of that name. Believe me, there are no monkeys or masks, but after due consideration they might have livened up the film.The sex scenes were passable but with little delicacy. The writer said she had hoped for a more grubby presentation of those scenes. I could not see much point in the scene where the woman walks into a room with her panties off. Do lesbians like to advertise their pubic hair? On the positive side the cinema photography was excellent. Glimpses of Sydney harbour and its famous bridge put me in a great mood anticipating what beautiful scenes might follow. Alas! What a strange mixture.In one of the final scenes we see a notice warning people to take care because the Sydney Harbour rocks are slippery. I waited in trepidation because i was sure something terrible was about to take place. But no! We hear a man addressing a lesbian investigator ...."Thank you for making love to my wife; you sure put a light in her eyes".I'd be surprised to learn if a film like this could prove to be a profitable venture. My recommendation: AVOID!

Rogue-32 Caught this on cable last night and I've decided that I like Susie Porter very much - she's got an incredibly expressive face (along with her adorable body, which we get to see a LOT of) and she was thoroughly convincing as the p.i. trying to solve the murder of a teenage poet while falling in love with the poet's teacher (Kelly McGillis, not quite believable in her role but she still looked good with Porter in the bathtub). Not very well-written or directed either - it's too long, too self-conscious and too convoluted - but it does have a certain style. . .and it DOES have the very appealing and watchable Porter.

George Parker "The Monkey's Mask" tells of a young Aussie woman who is 99.9% lesbian and 0.1% private detective charged with finding the killer of a young woman poet. A naive flick which has some style but precious little reason to watch or keep watching and no reason to care about any of the characters, "TMM" is mostly pretentious hogwash with people behaving in ways people only behave when they're acting in a movie. The film is annoyingly divided into chapters, the characters are boring, poetry and lesbian themes don't ring true, and the whole flick is about as palatable as Spackle on a Saltine. Passable stuff not worth the time. (C-)

Azeem Ali Khan Hmm, not bad: this film has a lot going for it, the principal asset being Susie Porter, who is assured but vulnerable, believable and very sexy in the lead. There is a pretty good chemistry between Kelly McGillis, who is always worth watching, regardless of whether or not she's playing steamy sex scenes with another woman, and she also conveys a dangerous ambivalence, for a good reason.Some of the dialogue is pretty good, and the poetry scene is always welcome as a setting for a film (only other one I can think of is Love Jones, which is in a diametrically opposite milieu). Unfortunately, some of the dialogue is pretty awful, mostly involving Kelly McGillis character's husband, who was completely unconvincing to me throughout. The ending was a surprise to me, but I decided it wasn't due to my being slow, more that the film simply hadn't led up to it. Still, to be fair, there may have been some clues earlier, which are touched on at the end.Worth it for Susie Porter, for the whodunnit which is quite well sustained, and (let's be honest) if love scenes between two very attractive women tickle your fancy...