B. Monkey movie storyline. Beatrice (Asia Argento) is a smash-and-grab jewel thief, an Italian in London, robbing with her partner Bruno. She and Bruno live with Paul, who’s Bruno’s lover and a world-weary cokehead in debt to a local thug. Each of the three loves the others. Beatrice quits the game, Paul and Bruno split, and a primary-school teacher named Alan enters Beatrice’s life.
He romances her with dinners and a trip to Paris to dance at a jazz club. Paul faces pressure to pay, Bruno wants another score, and Beatrice may not be able to trade the rush of robbery for the quiet life of a teacher’s wife. Her entanglements with Paul and Bruno may not be easily cut. And what of Alan: will he fight for love?
B. Monkey is a British-American 1998 crime drama film directed by Michael Radford and starring Asia Argento, Jared Harris, Rupert Everett, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Julie T. Wallace, Clare Higgins, Simone Bowkett, Elizabeth Ash and Marc Warren. Originally, Michael Caton-Jones was attached to direct the adaptation of the homonymous book by Andrew Davies, but left over creative differences.
Film Review for B. Monkey
The best part of ”B. Monkey” is reveling in the dark side of Rupert Everett. The dissolute Rupert Everett. Rupert Everett, drinking and drugging, destroying his chiseled good looks and recklessly putting his life in danger, as Paul, a bisexual London criminal of some sort who owes money to some not very nice people.
The filmmakers probably did not intend this emphasis. The director, Michael Radford, who also did ”Il Postino,” and the writers, Michael Thomas and Chloe King, probably expected the title character to be the focus. That would be Beatrice, played by Asia Argento, a decadent young woman who makes her living as an armed robber and lives in a murky but drop-dead glamorous apartment with her partners in crime: Bruno (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Paul.
B. (as in Bea) Monkey is her street name. One day she suddenly decides to wash the clown-wig-red dye out of her hair. This is how you know she’s ready for a major life-style change. Which is where the second-best part of ”B. Monkey” comes in: Jared Harris, who is becoming one of the most fascinating actors around. (Consider his portrayal of Warhol in ”I Shot Andy Warhol” and his turn as an immoral Russian taxi driver in Todd Solondz’s ”Happiness.”)
In ”B. Monkey,” Mr. Harris plays Alan, an elementary school teacher, the picture of safe, boring middle-classness, whose after-hours job is as a disk jockey at a hospital radio station. When Alan sees Bea in a bar, his safe, boring middle-class heart skips a beat. Soon, after a few dates and a weekend in Paris (during which we observe the aphrodisiacal powers of jazz), they’re living together on his shabby little houseboat, the picture of crazed domesticity.
Unfortunately, Beatrice — her full name, which she pronounces the Italian way (beh-ah-TREE-chay) — can’t seem to leave her past completely behind. Bruno turns up, declaring his love, and moves in with her and Alan. When the couple try to run away, trouble keeps following them. Of course, part of this is Beatrice’s fault. If Alan admires a car, she steals it for him. She has taken a straight job, but one day she, Bruno and another accomplice rob a bank during her lunch hour. (The fact that she still manages to bring a sandwich back for her boss is, if nothing else, impressive time management.)
It’s not that Ms. Argento does anything wrong. She’s gorgeous and sexy, as Beatrice should be, but her character has been either written or directed to be a little too aware of her charming quirkiness. We’re supposed to be as smitten with her as Alan, Paul and Bruno are. If you’re not, you won’t much care what becomes of her.
B. Monkey (1999)
Directed by: Michael Radford
Starring: Asia Argento, Jared Harris, Rupert Everett, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Julie T. Wallace, Clare Higgins, Simone Bowkett, Elizabeth Ash, Marc Warren
Screenplay by: Chloe King, Michael Radford, Michael Thomas
Production Design by: Sophie Becher
Cinematography by: Ashley Rowe
Film Editing by: Joëlle Hache
Costume Design by: Valentin Breton Des Loys
Set Decoration by: Careen Hertzog
Art Direction by: David Hindle
Music by: Luis Enríquez Bacalov, Jennie Muskett
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexuality and language, and for violence and drug content.
Distributed by: Miramax Films
Release Date: November 6, 1998 (UK), September 10, 1999 (USA)
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