1. Plot

2. Cast

3. Release

4. Reception

5. Accolades

6. References

7. External links

Plot

Bonnie (Stephanie Beatriz) is a successful architect living in Bushwick, Brooklyn with her boyfriend Matt (Michael Stahl-David) who works in advertising. He visits her at work to tell her he can't join her or her coworkers for drinks due to a last minute client meeting. Bonnie and her coworkers go out to a bar where she has many drinks as well as a little bit of cocaine. While dancing, a bar patron attempts to make inappropriate advances toward her. At the end of the night, Bonnie decides to walk home alone and puts on her headphones to listen to music. She is subsequently attacked by a stranger in a hoodie and taken into a back alley where he slams her head against the wall and rapes her. He then takes her driver's license and threatens her before running off. After a moment of shock, she regains enough composure to wipe herself with a tissue and walk home where she puts the tissues and her underwear in a bag and cleans up her head wound. Matt finds her sobbing on the couch and asks her what happened. She says she was mugged and asks to be taken to the hospital.

At the hospital, the detectives interviewing Bonnie ask if she was sexually assaulted, to which she silently confirms, much to Matt's shock. Bonnie gives the detectives her bag of tissues and underwear for evidence and the doctors collect additional evidence for her rape kit as well as stitch up the inside of her cheek from when she bit herself during the incident. After being given multiple prophylaxes and pamphlets for therapy, Bonnie and Matt head home, where Bonnie wants to regain a sense of normalcy while Matt becomes overprotective and overattentive of Bonnie. She eventually finds his new behavior overwhelming and is uncomfortable that it was brought about by her incident when he wasn't as attentive before. Matt suggests that she tell her coworkers and her parents about the incident, as well as go to a support group, so the responsibility to help her recover isn't only on him. Bonnie is reluctant to tell her coworkers, as she think they will likely ask one too many questions, or her parents, who she feels will blame her for the incident. She attempts group therapy, but finds it overwhelming. Going out becomes awkward for the couple as people believe her bruises are the result of an abusive relationship with Matt. Their sex life also suffers as Matt feels unable to perform initially due to what happened. When they finally have a good night, Bonnie makes him uncomfortable by saying she was imagining him as her assailant.

Bonnie returns to work because she's working on a large client, hoping it will help take her mind off of the incident. Her coworkers, having been told she was only mugged, cheer her up by telling her she's a badass, while her boss pushes back her meetings to give her more time to prepare. However, after some time, her boss feels she hasn't regained enough focus and reassigns her to a smaller client.

When another rape occurs in Bonnie's neighborhood, she is called in to the police station to look at a lineup. However, she is unable to recognize anyone as she never looked at her assaulter's face. Outside of the police station, she is approached by the other victim and hugged. Not wanting to feel like a victim, she denies anything happened to her and walks away. Later, speaking with the local prosecutor, she learns that if the DNA from the second victim matches the DNA from her, it will be easy to put the assailant in prison. However, the prosecutor tells her if it doesn't match, it will be harder to get Bonnie's assailant in jail as Bonnie's intoxication could make her testimony inadmissible and the defense attorney in her district is notorious for getting sexual assailants light sentences.

Bonnie goes out drinking with her coworkers again. At the end of the night, her coworkers insist on walking her home. Bonnie gets defensive, believing that Matt had called and asked them to, which they don't deny, but she lets them walk her home anyway. Bonnie confronts Matt about him becoming too overprotective since the assault and both voice their regrets regarding it. Feeling the incident has become too much of a burden on both of them, Bonnie decides to move out of their apartment, much to Matt's sadness. She temporarily moves in with her coworker Jack (Conrad Ricamora). While staying in his apartment, she gets a call from the prosecutor that the DNA from her incident doesn't match that from the other victim nor anyone from police records.

After working late one night, Bonnie walks home and spots another girl walking with her headphones on. Bonnie confronts the girl in front of her apartment building and accuses her of being reckless, but the girl brushes her off as crazy. She returns to Jack's and breaks down. While Jack consoles her, her mother calls. She decides to reveal the assault to her mom with Jack present. She later gains the courage to attend group therapy again. And she finally returns home to Matt.

Cast

• Stephanie Beatriz as Bonnie
• Michael Stahl-David as Matt
• Conrad Ricamora as Jack
• Catherine Curtin as Kirra
• Olga Merediz as Mariana
• Cindy Cheung as Joanna
• Susan Heyward as Grace
• Heather Simms as Detective Becca Miller
• Craig Walker as Detective Daniel Lambert

Release

The Light of The Moon premiered in March 2017 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where it won the Audience Award in the Narrative Feature Competition^[2] and was purchased for distribution by Imagination Worldwide. Amazon has acquired the streaming rights to the film it will be released on the Amazon Video Direct platform in early 2018.^[3]

The film will have a limited North American theatrical release in November 2017.^[4]

Reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97%, based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's critical consensus states, "The Light of the Moon traces one woman's tortured journey beyond sexual assault with powerful empathy, marking writer-director Jessica M. Thompson as a talent to watch."^[5] Metacritic gave the film a score of 76 out of 100 based on 9 critical reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[6]

Accolades

References

External links

• {{Official website|http://www.thelightofthemoonfilm.com/}}
• {{IMDb title|5047336}}

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