Opens December 6, Cert PG, 122 mins
Vincent (Jacques Bidou) is not a happy man. A French factory worker, his monotonous, backbreaking toil holds scant rewards. There’s little compensation at home, too, as routine set meals, domestic drudgery and joyless sex only compound his grey existence. After deciding enough is enough, Vincent spontaneously decides to leave home and travel around the world. Beginning with a trip to Venice, Vincent encounters numerous cranks and misfits on his canal-side strolls.
Occasionally, his bewildered family are seen pondering his motives and next moves, but there’s little about Monday Morning to invite a similar reaction. Esteemed, veteran director Otar loseliani captures dowdy rural France and Venice’s waterways with broad, elegant strokes. But Bidou’s painfully mannered acting and a lifeless script ensures the film is as directionless as Vincent’s travel plans. Rather than offering any wisdom on personal collapse, this appears like one long Stella Artois advert with grizzled old men hitching lifts down cobbled country lanes. Tepid and frankly tedious, loseliani is capable of so much more.