Where I Watched it: AMC Plus

English Audio Description?: No

This quiet Sundance hit landed on AMC Plus a little while ago, and I’m still catching up on reviews, so I’m not sure if it still is on AMC Plus. Monica reminds me a little of To Leslie, in that it likely will have fans who will quietly champion this film as an outsider candidate throughout awards season. it really only stands to pick up nominations from indie and LGBT leaning organizations, but that has more to do with exposure than the film itself.

Trace Lysette plays the titular Monica, a transgender woman who is called upon to help take care of her mother, who abandoned her many years ago. Her mother now suffers from dementia, and often doesn’t know or comprehend what is going on, and offers Monica a complicated reuniting when she likely would want to be recognized as being well adjusted, and thriving in her own personal way. At some point in Monica’s life story, she was the victim of a hateful mother, but that’s not what we see. Patricia Clarkson plays Monica’s mother, and she does so with so many levels it is impossible to not feel like she’s already being robbed of an Oscar nomination. Her character can mentally be anywhere at any point in time, and often that creates for so many “in the moment” experiences for Monica, bonding in some ways that she never got, in a true mother/daughter fashion. However, there’s still a hint of the woman inside that Monica left behind all those years ago, and that dynamic is what moves Monica the film so carefully through this reunion.

However, as AMC Plus doesn’t support audio description for this film, it becomes hard for me to nail down specifically a grade for it. There are dramatic pauses where we are looking off and pondering life, but in those quieter moments for a blind audience, we aren’t sure what we are supposed to be pondering along with the characters, as no context is given to us because the accessibility isn’t there.

Even though I can’t grade Monica, I can say that I really wish Clarkson’s performance was being talked about a hell of a lot more than it is. Then again, often the best performances of the year aren’t the ones actually nominated, they’re the ones with the strongest financial backing. In the past years, this is something that has kept actresses like Dale Dickey and Ann Dowd from nominations, and it’s what will keep Clarkson away from hers.

If you can find Monica someplace with audio description, I’d encourage you to watch it. I think it’s a good film, but without appropriate accessibility, I can’t gauge how good.

Final Grade: unwatchable