THE MONKEY'S MASK

Year: 2000
USA: Strand Releasing
UK: Momentum
Cast: Susie Porter, Kelly McGillis, Marton Csokas, Deborah Mailman, Abbie Cornish, Jean-Pierre Mignon, Caroline Gillmer, Brendan Cowell, John Noble, Linden Wilkinson, Annie Jones, Jim Holt, Boyana Novakovic, Chris Haywood, John Batchelor
Director: Samantha Lang
Country: Australia
UK: 91 mins
UK: 93 mins
UK Certificate: 18 contains coarse language and strong sex
USA Release Date: 27 July 2001 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 30 March 2001

Synopsis

Jill Fitzpatrick (Susie Porter) is a 28-year-old, street-smart out-of-work P.I., wishing she wasn't celibate. Eager for the taste of adrenalin, she accepts a job investigating the disappearance of Mickey (Abbie Cornish), a young female student.

Jill quickly strikes a spark with the seductive Diana (Kelly McGillis), Mickey's poetry lecturer. But it's not long before Mickey's body is found; she's been strangled and dumped.

Distrusting the cops, Mickey's grief-stricken parents ask Jill to find her murderer. Jill is soon hurled into a passionate liaison, and with Diana as her guide, she enters the surprisingly seamy underworld of poetry, looking for clues to the murder.

For whom did Mickey write her sexually charged poems? What's the connection between Mickey and her two favourite male poets? Who's leaving threatening messages in verse on Jill's answering machine?

Blinded by her passion, Jill is compromised in her search for the truth.... until her own life is in danger.

Based on the novel in poetry by Dorothy Porter THE MONKEY'S MASK explores the power and the danger of infatuation, the ethics of 'knowing', the threads that entwine sex with death.