Love Me Till Monday (2014) - Improvise. Copy. Paste. Execute.
The camerawork lingers on sideways glances and conversations are peppered with common everyday stuttering, which could lead Maguire's character to a dead-end of annoying whiny neuroses, but the film is engineered to drop each and every viewer deep in Becky's corner. The upshot is we're more likely than not to ride it out with her purely because she is so obviously the one and only focus point of the film. In the supporting cast we have the only other three dimensional character played by Plester, a skittish but laid-back boss who sparks a relationship with Becky, leading to low-key office misdemeanours.
Elsewhere, there's a side story involving cromniomancy (the art of divination through onion carving – bit of Wiccan trivia there) as Becky longs for “The One”, be it her clearly interested boss, or her sporty co-worker (Royce Pierreson). Backed by middle-of-the-road acoustic folk music, the onion witchery feels like a misstep, and the film often falls between independently interesting ideas like this, and ends up shooting itself in the foot with indecision.
Love Me Till Monday exists somewhere in between deep character study, office drama, rom-com, but each part is left unfulfilled, despite the charming courting between Becky and Steve, an anti-romance laden with the same awkward laughing that can affect any film where the improvised dialogue falters. Luckily, director Hardy does wrench everything he can into a position where Becky is central, but that sometimes isn't enough either.
Upon leaving university with big dreams, only to find a barren job market and the film industry not in its best health, Hardy and company made Love Me Till Monday as a passion project, but sadly, the passion is scarcely there. When Maguire's improvised dialogue finds its place, Becky comes across as likeable enough but sadly her performance is one of the few attention-grabbing things about Love Me Till Monday.
Grade = B-
Originally posted here, at Screenjabber