Following a seven-year stint in prison, George (Bob Hoskins) struggles to find his bearings. His ex-wife (Pauline Melville) barricades the front door to her home, barring him from reconnecting with his daughter, Jeannie (Zoe Nathenson). Most of his former criminal cohorts are irked by the brusque, often combative, manner in which he approaches them. He wants substantial work, but they’re hesitant to give it to him. It doesn’t help that George’s fashion choices are so outdated, making him something of a walking relic. He very much looks like someone who’s trying to make sense of a world whose rules have changed since he was in the clink. His doing time has, in a sense, left him out of step with time.
Mona Lisa explores the alternately absurd and tragic multitudes of this bullish outsider. Neil Jordan’s breakthrough film brings George into the orbit of an enigmatic sex worker, Simone (Cathy Tyson), whose activities leave him at once confused and repulsed. Initially assigned to drive Simone to meet her various clients, he bristles against her attempts to curb his more abrasive characteristics and help him blend in with the crowds at the high-end hotels where she often works. George and Simone are a quintessential odd couple, and their bickering, even at its most hostile, is strangely endearing and often funny, especially whenever Simone steps into the alpha role. More importantly, it’s undergirded by a certain tenderness that’s clearly informed by their shared experiences on the fringes of respectable society.
In its more relaxed opening act, when George and Simone are feeling one another out and solidifying their bond, Mona Lisa fuses broad comedy and noir tropes to offer a delightfully off-kilter depiction of a most unlikely friendship. Hoskins’s brilliantly modulated performance fuses a dangerous impulsiveness with an often disarming empathy, which is particularly on display in the scenes that depict George’s careful handling of Simone, lending his character vulnerability and the film a thrilling volatility. Especially during Mona Lisa’s early stretches, George, and Hoskins by proxy, grapples at length with Simone’s inscrutability. It’s also when the duo’s knotty feelings about love, sex, and devotion are at their most beguiling. Every subtle glance in a rearview mirror or across a hotel lobby can be read in numerous ways.
Pity, then, that Mona Lisa throws subtlety to the wind as soon as Simone’s obsession with finding and saving a friend and fellow sex worker, Cathy (Kate Hardie), becomes the driving force of the narrative. Suddenly the film is dedicated above all else to a clearly defined action and it transforms into a second-rate Taxi Driver. The sequences that depict how George and Simone are inextricably drawn to the neon-soaked, smoke-filled haven of sleaze that is Kings Cross are wondrously atmospheric, but the film’s sexual politics grow increasingly regressive, despite its ostensibly progressive and sympathetic portrait of sex workers.
The slow reveal of a London underworld’s more sinister side handily allows George to sharpen his antihero cred, making threats and busting heads as he tries to save Cathy from the grips of a depraved mob boss, Mortwell (Michael Caine). As George emerges as an unwitting savior, the film repositions him as fully redeemed and Cathy as a reward that he’s dutifully earned but is ultimately denied. By the time of the last-act twist, which uses queerness primarily in the service of a narrative rug pull, Mona Lisa has fully transformed from an intimate study of love amid perilous conditions to a more generic thriller that reinforces traditional gender roles.
Image/Sound
The Criterion Collection’s transfer is from a 2K digital restoration and marks a significant upgrade in image quality from their 2001 DVD release of Mona Lisa. The picture is sharp and full of rich details that make the dark heart of the London underworld all the more strongly felt, while the solid contrast ratio ensures that the many nighttime sojourns to Kings Cross are vividly rendered. If the colors seem a bit muted in certain scenes, then those vibrant reds, blues, and greens that dot the film elsewhere suggest that this palette is nothing if not deliberate. As for the lossless audio track, it boasts a well-balanced mix that, while lacking in dynamic range, expertly prioritizes the crystal-clear-sounding dialogue.
Extras
For this Blu-ray release, Criterion has recycled the composite audio commentary with Neil Jordan and Bob Hoskins that was originally included on their 2001 DVD edition. Jordan discusses how he was aiming for the simplicity of a fairy tale and how Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa” served as the catalyst for the story, while Hoskins gets into his process in finding a balance between George’s tough-guy exterior and sensitive interior.
A new Zoom conversation with Jordan and Cathy Tyson, moderated by critic Ryan Gilbey, delves into the director’s approach to performance and how he discovered his lead actress on the London stage. Two interviews from 2015 are also included, one with screenwriter David Leland and one with producer Stephen Woolley, and they cover the development process of the script and how Jordan, an Irishman, represents London as an outsider.
Finally, in an interview with Jordan and Hoskins from the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, the director and actor touch on how the main character was developed from the initial screenplay and all the way throughout the production. The package is rounded out with a foldout booklet with an essay by critic Ryan Gilbey, who praises the film’s exploration of the chasm between how we present ourselves to the world and who we really are.
Overall
The Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray release of Neil Jordan’s breakthrough film Mona Lisa offers a superb upgrade on the A/V front and a few new extras to boot.
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