EW.com — Waking up naked and hungover on the beach next to a stranger after a booze-soaked one-night stand doesn’t exactly sound like the beginning of a beautiful love story — especially when it leads to getting arrested for indecent exposure. But when it comes to Monday, the steamy new movie starring Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough, it’s time to throw out any assumptions of what a traditional romance looks like. Relationships can start in the back of a cop car!
This is the first trailer for director Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ film that subverts expectations of what a movie love story looks like. Stan sheds his hard-edged, scowling MCU assassin persona Bucky Barnes — next seen in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — to become the laidback and fun-loving Mickey, who meets the older and intriguing Chloe (Gough) at a wild party one night on a Greek island. Their magical weekend of drinking, dancing, and sex in public places plays out like a realistic and exciting fairytale. But when Monday morning rolls around, reality starts to outweigh the fantasy as Mickey and Chloe are reminded there’s not always a “happily ever after” in life.
“I was always excited and interested in love stories but I always wanted to explore when things go wrong in relationships,” Papadimitropoulos previously told EW of his fourth feature film, which he wrote with Rob Hayes. “Why do people become so different at some point when everything started like a dream?”
Papadimitropoulos knows moviegoers have seen the candy-coated, happy ending love stories in films many times before, so he wanted to take an honest look at what really happens with relationships — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
“The rom-com genre gave us some amazing films in the past but then again, you watch them, they’re entertaining, but it’s not true,” he said. “You don’t really believe what’s going on at the end. So we start the film like a romantic comedy but then let the characters develop the way they would in real life and have problems, bottled up feelings, things they hide from each other, skeletons in their closet, and see what happens when the reality of everyday life settles in. It’s great having an amazing weekend but then Monday comes with a reality check.”
Monday premieres in select theaters and on-demand on April 16.
