Back in my good, old secondary education years, I used to actively avoid giving class presentations. The idea of speaking in front of people would make my nerves freeze, so I used to try different tactics to get out of them. With varying levels of success, these included A) talking to the teacher about accepting a zero/incomplete (this worked once or twice, but most of the times the teacher would saddle up to their teacherly responsibilities as an educator and make me present), B) skipping class and going to the school library (a hit or miss; sometimes I had to present the next day), and C) going to the bathroom when it was nearing my turn (tried once, didn’t work, and the class probably thought I had to take a long shit).
It is with these memories that I found Tim Roth’s avoidant behavior in Michel Franco’s latest Sundown more blithely relatable than how the movie may appear otherwise. Roth plays Neil, a British man who is vacationing in Mexico with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg, who plays characters that certainly need a vacation) and her two children. Signs of opulence glare at us like the consistent beat of the sun: the pristine infinity pool, vacant lounge chairs among this pale-skinned quartet, the unregulated flow of cocktails. The luxury we witness is supplied through their ownership of a prominent London slaughterhouse, which seems to keep Alice distracted from enjoying herself.
Soon, Alice receives a call from overseas and hears that their mother is hospitalized, closely followed by the news of her death. The family rushes to get to the airport for funeral arrangements, but at ticket check, Neil forgets his passport. After promising the family that he’ll catch the next flight as soon as he can, he promptly rents a motel and continues to vacation alone.
The story would have a different vibe if it weren’t for Roth’s instructed discipline to the character: quiet, unassuming, yielding. Neil presents as an ideal uncle, a giving brother, and a relatively polite tourist, which seems to push any shadowy doubt on his motives to the very back of the line. On the one hand, Neil’s dodging of imminent responsibilities can be an aggravating trait to watch for even the most benign of characters. On the other hand, how can we, pandemic cave creatures, resist his escapist ways in wanting to being outside and away from his family? There was momentary confusion when Neil is peeling something off his forearm; it took a few seconds for me to realize that he was sunburned.
Neil, of course, is not a perfect man. In one scene, he explains to his companion Bernice (Iazua Larios), a kindhearted street vendor, that she simply must visit Rome and Paris when she gets a chance (hitting all the gesticulation that screams privilege). His naivete (or, from a different perspective, chilled carelessness) in being a city that is riddled with crimes and opportunists while drinking buckets of beer in the sun makes for the lingering suspicion that something surely bad is about to happen. In these disparities, Neil’s muted reactions to life, in distress and in relaxation, comes to a breaking point for everyone around him. While the sun may look peaceful as it sets, his world is on fire.
Sundown
2021
dir. Michel Franco
83 min.
Opens Friday, 2/4 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre and Kendall Square Cinema
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