Tropic Sprockets / Sundown

By Ian Brockway

Michel Franco (New Order) takes a page from Michelangelo Antonioni in “Sundown,” a film that is sharply pointed but unsparingly somber. The film boasts expansive scenery and eerie settings full of haunt, but its minimal dialogue and sharp view will repel most. That being said it’s economical precision and laser sharp perspective is to be admired and you will be drawn as if by a dream into melancholy and apprehension.

Neil (Tim Roth) is on vacation with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two saturnine young adult children Colin (Samuel Bottomley) and Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan). There are lounge chairs by the pool, groggy massages and big drinks under the sun, until Alice, a rich CEO of a slaughterhouse business gets a call on her phone.

Neil for the most part is very a listless figure basking in the sun. He appears disinterested and incapable of drama or conflict. He says little and shuffles off here and there. Wrinkled, splotchy, craggy and pale, Neil is a human gecko, always basking in the Mexican sun, not caring whether he is soggy or sunburned.

When Alice is overcome and stressed with tragic loss, Neil says nothing. He is either at a loss for words or incapable of action. One is unsure as to the actual reasons for Neil’s detachment.

Pulled in by a drowsy spell, Neil encounters Bernice (Iazua Larios) and the two have sex as if by rote. He is suddenly in the orbit of two young men. At the beach, Neil is two feet away from a terrible shooting. Blood coats the sand. He looks at the body and lopes away.

After a business meeting, Alice is in a car. She is shot and killed. The police take Neil away in handcuffs and he is locked up under a sickly green light, left with a huge pig in a shower spouting ashy gray water. Daylight finds Neil shedding his human skin and wincing in the sun.

Surprising yet devastating medical news releases Neil from prison, but he is hardly changed and continues on just as before. An upsetting bloody gift is left at Neil’s room and he collapses. At the hospital, due to lack of attention, Neil escapes as if by spontaneous whim.

Why does Neil act the way he does? Does he feel much of anything? We are never quite sure. At times it seems he is only a slight passerby, a passing figment. Though audiences may well be irritated or annoyed, the possibilities are many. Economical, spare and deadpan with echoes of “The Passenger,” “Sundown” is a perfect definition of the existential on film.

 

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