MONSTER is making headlines thanks to Charlize Theron who’s been scooping up awards (including a Best Actress Oscar) for her gritty, anti-pretty portrait of America’s ‘first female serial killer’. MONSTER takes a different approach to the life of Aileen Wuornos (the subject of two Nick Broomfield docs), a prostitute executed for killing seven men in Jeb Bush’s Florida. The film posits a near-suicidal woman (Theron) who meets the love of her life in Selby Wall (Ricci), a young woman sent away to ‘cure her homosexuality’. Desperate to care for her, Aileen continues working as a prostitute until one day a punter turns violent. Mixing social commentary, road movie and romance, MONSTER dares to empathise with its antihero.