Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon review – strange and stunning descent into chaos

“Is it only cause you're lonely they have blamed you/Or that Mona Lisa strangeness in your style?” sings Nat King Cole over the opening credits of Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, Ana Lily Amirpour’s strange and stunning third feature. “Are you real Mona Lisa?” he asks. “Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?”

The film’s titular Mona Lisa, or Mona Lee, or “Lunatic” as she’s dubbed in the official cast list, is similarly a figment of society’s imagination rather than a real person to be known and understood. She is played by Jeon Jong-seo, who broke out in 2018 with her beguiling turn in Lee Chang-dong’s critically beloved Burning. Still only her third acting credit, her role here is no less esoteric, and the film’s refusal to let us into her thoughts makes for an unendingly intriguing character. The less you try to understand her as a person, the more fun you’ll have.

Having spent twelve years locked inside a mental asylum for extreme schizophrenia, Mona Lisa one day decides to use her newly-discovered hypnosis powers to break out. At first she’s just hungry for cheese puffs, but after being gifted a pair of shoes from a bemused stranger, she’s off to explore the swampy surroundings of New Orleans.

Padding around with her lank hair, straitjacket and Converse shoes, she first attracts the attention of drug-dealing DJ Fuzz (Ed Skrein), who is smitten by her strangeness. Later, she meets Bonnie (Kate Hudson), a single mum and stripper who takes Mona under her wing, much to the chagrin of her precocious son Charlie (Evan Whitten). It’s up to police officer Harold (Craig Robinson) to try and locate the escapee, who doesn’t care who she has to hurt in order to remain free.

Much like Amirpour’s previous films A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and The Bad Batch, there’s a near-constant soundtrack that spits out banger after banger as proceedings head further south. Coupled with the seedy neon glow of the city’s backstreets, the eerie Blood Moon hanging in the sky and a series of disorienting stylistic tricks, the overall ambience is pretty overwhelming. It makes for an incredibly entertaining experience on the big screen, all thumping bass and epileptic colour.

In her most interesting role in quite some time, Kate Hudson is fabulous as the foul-mouthed Bonnie Belle, marking her comeback just in time for her role in the upcoming Knives Out 2. But the film’s real breakout star comes from the diminutive Evan Whitten, acting with such assurance and range that he puts the adults around him to shame.

The screenplay is rude and funny and gleeful; dubstep is “music for goblins,” a pole dancer is “America’s Wet Dream.” There could be some accusations of stigmatising schizophrenia sufferers, though, with Mona’s character leaning a little towards Angelina-Jolie-in-Girl-Interrupted territory of Manic Pixie Mentally Ill Girl. When you zoom out to look at the significance of Mona, perhaps how we’re meant to perceive her is a little more ambiguous, though. The fame of the famous painting is in its subject’s ordinariness. Who is this woman, and why do we care about her so much? In the film, New Orleans is depicted as a city filled with “degenerates, drunks and nutjobs” – one of the first people who speaks to Mona offers her oxycodone. Why does society focus on and sensationalize those diagnosed with complex mental health issues when the suffering is right there, outside our door?

Perhaps I’m overanalysing. The sheer lilting chaos of Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon reminded me of a toned-down Sion Sono flick, a loud, bright thing to experience and not try to de-code. For all its oddly-pitched anarchy, some might suggest style over substance. No matter: when you’re having this much fun, why question it?

Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon was screened as part of the Venice Film Festival 2021. It is now available to stream on Sky Cinema.