If youth is a party weekend, what happens when the fun stops? The answer is Monday – Argyris Papadimitropoulos’s glum follow-up to Suntan, another detailing of the goings-on in a “fun” place where not much fun was happening.
I warn you, this is a slog, but it’s an instructive one, reminding one and all that good times are great fun and all that, but eventually clothes have to be straightened, facts have to be faced and the serious business of real life has to be engaged with.
Chloe is a woman at the wrong end of her thirties first met in the middle of drunken break-up with some vile dude on the end of a teary phone call. She’s in a club, where Donna Summer’s I Feel Love is banging away. Chloe does not feel love. But then she is introduced to the DJ, Mickey, and before either can ask “what happened there?” the two of them are waking up naked the next morning on the beach of their Greek holiday island, to the bemusement of sunbathers and the irritation of the local police, who haul them away in cuffs.
An arresting meet cute, you might say. Chloe is played by Denise Gough, aged about 40 when this was made, Mickey by Sebastian Stan, about 38, the pair of them convincing as party animals who’ve been at the party too long. Mickey, we learn, has been DJing on the island for seven years. Denise is an immigration lawyer. We’re not sure how long she’s been there but she is settled in, has a nice place and so on.
The film negotiates these two people as they negotiate a relationship, a new thing for two people in stasis, each hoping, maybe, that this new thing will jolt them out of themselves and into something else. A touch of Andrew Haigh’s Weekend in these early scenes of two people trying to get a feel for each other’s psyche, though eventually a JG Ballard-esque ennui starts to take over – the self-deception of the well-to-do but bored living in places they keep telling themselves are paradise here on earth.
Eventually the two strands collide as the relationship starts to go wrong, but not before Papadimitropoulos has emphasised, reiterated and then made emphatic one more time how stuck these people are. Denise doesn’t know what she wants and is flailing. Her ovaries are calling but Mickey already has a kid with a woman on the island. When Chloe eventually meets Aspa (Elli Tringou) the scene is all about Aspa telling Chloe what a baby Mickey is. We already know.
If you’ve ever wanted to see Sebastian Stan’s bum, the film has something for you. He gets the short straw in terms of character. Mickey is peevish, antsy, a beta male who feels like an alpha out here on the island, a lord when he’s on the wheels of steel but not much when off them. Gough is hands-down more impressive, so natural, imbuing Chloe with a fragility that makes her character one you want to succeed. When Chloe smiles, which isn’t often, the world comes alive.
If you’ve ever been to a holiday destination and clapped eyes on people like Chloe and Mickey – they’re like you but they’ve chosen to make a life in a place where they’re “always on holiday” – this film will ring true. The fact that Papadimitropoulos has not much to say beyond that point is a bit of a pity because the actors are good, the locations (the islands of Paros and Antiparos, as well as Athens) are lovely and the use of lots of actual clubbers as extras gives it an atmosphere you can almost taste.
Why it’s nearly two hours long I just don’t understand…
Monday – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
