The Light of the Moon (2017)
TRAILER
After her world is irrevocably changed, a successful New York City architect struggles to regain intimacy and control in her life.
Director:
Jessica M. ThompsonWriter:
Jessica M. ThompsonStars:
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
1 November 2017 (USA) See more »Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
ColorDid You Know?
Trivia
The HBO documentary that Bonnie and Matt are watching while eating dinner on the couch is "Back on Board: Greg Louganis", which was edited by the film's writer-director, Jessica M. Thompson. See more »Quotes
Matt:
You know what you look like? You look like the last kid picked for the
softball team: "I'm just out here in left field waiting for the ball."
"How much did you have to drink?"
A rape victim has a couple
of equally unattractive choices when faced with that question. She can
lie, and thus participate in the sickness of a culture which deems a
rape victim somehow responsible for the rape if she's been drinking. Or
she can tell the truth, and wait for the inevitable character
assassination. Shame spiral to follow: If only I hadn't gotten drunk
that night ... if only I hadn't danced with that guy ... if only I
hadn't walked home alone ... What comes after the rape is
almost worse than the rape itself. Jessica Thompson's film "The Light of
the Moon" (her first as writer and director) is a nuanced and sensitive
exploration of the many ways rape affects a person's life, even as she
tries like hell to get back to normal.
Bonnie (Stephanie Beatriz) and her boyfriend Matt (Michael Stahl-David)
live in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. They both have demanding
careers, and the first scene of the film shows Matt begging off from a
night out with Bonnie and her co-workers. (This opening scene is pretty
rough around the edges. There's a lot of dead air, and Bonnie and Matt's
relationship appears to be made up of rolling their eyes at each other
in generalized sarcastic attitudes. I felt my heart sink. But stick it
out through the first scene. The film finds it footing soon after.) Then
follows a montage of Bonnie having a blast with her friends, pounding
down shots and dancing at a club. On the three-block walk home to her
apartment, a guy drags her into an alley and rapes her. Bonnie staggers
home, face bloody, and thinks twice before getting in the shower. She
puts her underwear and the piece of Kleenex she used to wipe between her
legs in a plastic bag, actions that tell us she has decided to report
it.
The "processing" of a rape victim is shown step by
humiliating step, as Bonnie—with her upset boyfriend sitting beside
her—answers the questions asked by the detective, the nurse, and the
social worker. She answers truthfully, even though she knows she will be
judged. She was wasted. She also did some cocaine. There was a guy who
kept wanting to dance with her. No, she didn't get a good look at her
attacker. "Were you wearing your headphones?" asks her boyfriend at one
point. She winces at the implied judgment. She goes back to work a
couple of days later—against Matt's advice—and tells everyone she was
mugged. The only person who knows she was raped is Matt.
"The
Light of the Moon" is refreshingly honest in its acknowledgment of the
impact rape has on a couple, not just in the bedroom, but in all aspects
of their lives. Matt doesn't know what to do to help. She knows he's
trying but it just serves as a reminder of what happened to her.
Suddenly he doesn't want her working late? Suddenly he's cooking for
her? Where was all this caring before she was raped? There are a
couple of truly extraordinary scenes where the couple try to have sex
again, and he's afraid of hurting her, and she wants him to do it like
he used to do it, and they're both worried the other is thinking about
the rape ... These scenes are so honest! The actors are so honest! After
the first 5 minutes of the film, where the two actors roll their eyes
at each other, what emerges is a believably three-dimensional loving and
difficult relationship struggling to exist under the weight of the
trauma.
Bonnie resists being labeled as a "victim." She hates the support
group. She rails at Matt, "I don't want to join the Sisterhood of Rape
Victims." All of these things are completely normal, completely
understandable, but they're so rarely explored in film. There's a brief
moment in "Elle," when Michèle (Isabelle Huppert)
reveals to a table of good friends that she was raped. Suddenly
everyone looks at her differently, with concerned and pitying
expressions. If she had said, "My car was stolen" or "Someone stole my
purse" they might be shocked, but they wouldn't look at her like she was
a different person because of it. This is what Bonnie so desperately
wants to avoid.
"The Light of the Moon"'s low budget shows in its
limited locations (mostly interiors) and its scattershot approach to
second-unit "atmospheric" shots of the neighborhood. But Thompson (and
her cinematographer Autumn Eakin)
have made very careful choices. Sometimes the camera is handheld,
sticking close to Bonnie, a jagged representation of her emotional
state. Sometimes, when Bonnie tries to dissociate, the sound hollows
out, like she's at the bottom of a well. In one scene between Bonnie and
Matt, the camera is placed above the bed, and their conversation,
intimate and difficult, plays out in just one take. This is a
relationship movie, a relationship heightened and threatened by what
happened to her. Thompson's script and her visual style give them the
space to try to work it out.
Both Bonnie and Matt are three-dimensional characters. Bonnie drinks too much. Matt takes the relationship for granted. Conrad Ricamora
plays Jack, Bonnie's co-worker and best friend, who seems in that
deadly first scene to be the obligatory "Sassy Gay Friend" but he turns
out to be a thoughtful and sensitive presence, a man who watches his
friend disintegrate and—like Matt—wants to help, even though she refuses
to ask.
Rape has been used as a plot point from the beginning of
cinema, but rarely has the aftermath been explored in such a detailed
and sensitive way. Matt, devastated, says to her at one point, "This
happened to us." The comment goes over as well with Bonnie as you would imagine, but in a lot of ways the line is the key to the whole film.
FINAL RATING: 8/10 FOR THE GENRE & 8/10 OVERALL. A lovely movie. Nothing else to say.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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