Stalker For Hire
Directed by Dana Adam Shapiro
At Village East
Runtime: 99 min.
Voyeurism and sex tend to evoke a pornographic atmosphere, one which Monogamy doesn’t completely deny. A bit dirty and scattered, the film fails to offer any payoff for its crawling plot and salacious promises.
Chris Messina is Theo, a twenty-something Brooklynite wedding photographer who moonlights as a hired stalker. Adorable old men like to hire Theo to photograph them without their knowledge; he a stealth paparazzi. Nervous for his impending marriage to Nat (Rashida Jones), Theo becomes obsessed with Penny, a married woman who hires him to photo-stalk her public sexual encounters. A hospital stay gives Theo the perfect excuse to turn into an obsessive freak, and ends up wrecking his impending marriage.
Theo is exactly as whiny, indecisive and annoying as he may sound in that brief summary. It’s not all his fault, however, director Dana Adam Shapiro constructs an environment where Theo is constantly bombarded with successful relationships, yet is denied sex by his fiancée at every turn. That Theo inappropriately desires sex in a hospital room is beside the point for Shapiro, whose vision of the young, urban sexual identity is definitely skewed towards that particular indie male perspective. Shapiro’s big reveal—that traditional monogamy is stifling for everyone—is as shallow as it is predictable. For all his time spent puzzling over Subgirl’s vaguely pornographic photos, one would hope he could come to some deeper conclusion.
In fact, all plot advancement in Monogamy comes through sporadic photographic evidence. The basis of Nat and Theo’s relationship is told late in the film in a bloated photographic montage of situations as stereotypical as Theo’s opening wedding shots. While delightfully pedestrian in content, the film’s few conversations lack a turn and spend quite a bit of time on exposition.
Theo’s cinematic identity is constructed through his camera. Since he cannot express himself through speaking—often breaking off in the middle of a question, or pleading “listen, listen, listen,” then not having anything to say—Theo is restricted to observing, rather then participating in his environment. It is difficult to successfully portray a largely apathetic protagonist and maintain lifeblood to the beating heart of the story, and Shapiro definitely loses his patient’s pulse.
See Monogamy for the rush of identification that comes with finding your hometown on the silver screen, or see Monogamy for Jones’ fabulous singing voice. But see Monogamy expecting little commitment.