Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon

“Forget what you know”, is the advice from a fortune cookie in this third fiction feature from Ana Lily Amirpour. Advice that is useful to the viewer too. As in her two previous films – the vampire-skater-western A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and the cannibal-romance The Bad Batch – Amirpour makes use of familiar ingredients, but the result is a cocktail unlike any you’ve tasted before.

This time, she tosses an unconventional superhero, southern Gothic horror, and neon-lit ravers into the mix. All of it raging around Mona Lisa (played by Jeon Jong-seo, Burning, 2018), who escapes from an institution by the light of a blood moon and is able to force people to act using supernatural powers. With the impetuosity of a new-born child, she roams the hedonistic streets of sultry New Orleans, where street dealer Fuzz and prostitute Bonnie take her under their wing. Nevertheless, she goes her own way, freed from the control others have exercised over her for so long, and all to the beat of an exhilarating Miami-electro soundtrack.

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