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Long before “gothic” meant listening to moody music and buying clothes at Hot Topic, it referred to a form of literary horror that embraced doomed romances and twisted individuals with a slight touch of the supernatural around the edges. In 1796, Matthew Gregory Lewis spun many of those themes into The Monk, a sprawling story of lust, betrayal, and evil that generated no small amount of controversy in its time. Now, over 200 years later, it emerges again in a new cinematic adaptation from French director Dominik Moll.
This version strips out several subplots and condenses characters to focus on the story of brother Ambrosio (Vincent Cassel), left on the steps of a Spanish monastery as an infant and raised to be an exemplary monk and preacher. His passionate sermons capture the attention of the innocent young woman Antonia (Joséphine Japy) and the mysterious masked novice Valerio (Déborah François). The latter is especially devoted to him, eventually revealing herself as both a woman in disguise and possessing seemingly supernatural power. The combination proves irresistible to the once-devout Ambrosio, and, soon after, he turns his sights on Antonia.
What follows are a number of deliciously diabolical twists and turns that I won’t spoil here, no matter how long the source material’s been around. The Monk ascribes to a slow-burn style of horror, gradually ratcheting up the wrong, so the exquisitely dark ending feels inevitable when it arrives. The actual events may not be as shocking in the 21st century as they were in the 18th, but they still carry weight here in a way that escapes our more modern short-attention-span approach.
Vincent Cassel mirrors the film’s overall restraint with his performance as Ambrosio. He charts Ambrosio’s descent from decency to debauchery subtly. Déborah François does most of her work behind a creepy full face mask as Valerio, but she does it well. Joséphine Japy’s Antonia suffers in comparison, but she’s also saddled with the least interesting character from the novel. You can tell that she’s trying to be more than just a portrait of virtue for Ambrosio to ruin, but the material simply isn’t there to support it. Sergi Lopez gets to bookend the movie as a particularly wicked member of Ambrosio’s congregation, and he has great fun with his two scenes.
Moll sets up some beautiful imagery throughout the film, using the monastery and surrounding environments to evoke a classically gothic tone while straying just a bit from historical accuracy. He also includes a couple of impressionistic video montages during the more supernaturally inflected scenes, but he doesn’t overdo them. These choices leave the film feeling a bit low-tech, but in a way that adds to the atmosphere he’s constructing.
Like many films in the genre, the final reveal will shape a lot of reaction to the film, and there are some who just won’t buy it. It worked for me because it struck that note of personal and spiritual desolation that pervades Gothic novels. It’s nowhere near as showy as the trends that term has come to represent, but it’s much more effective.
