Written and Directed by Michel Franco
Starring: Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Iazua Larios, Henry Goodman, Albertine Kotting, and Samuel Bottomley
‘Sundown’ tells the story of wealthy family, Neil (played by Tim Roth) and Alice Bennett (Charlotte Gainsbourg) plus their two children Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and Colin (Samuel Bottomley). We meet the family at the beginning of the movie, as they lay by the poolside in sunny Mexico at their luxury hotel. They look like the picture perfect family, until Alice receives a phone call and the family has to return home, immediately things start to unravel.
The family head to the airport to go back home, and as they’re about to buy tickets Neil can’t find his passport. He must have left it at the hotel. He vows to retrieve it and take the next flight home. But that doesn’t happen. Soon after Neil has shoved Alice and the kids through the departure gate, and he’s away in a cab, bound for downtown Acapulco.
He’s now staying at Hotel Camelinas, not taking calls, just living the dream. When Alice returns, a full fortnight later, she finds him drinking beer on the beach with the new girlfriend he picked up at the local bodega. When Alice see’s him, she throws up her hands in ager and yells “What the fuck is wrong with you?”. The question throughout the whole movie you try to figure out, what is actually wrong with Neil?
“Sundown” is a very slow burn, and at its most engrossing as an individual portrait, and Roth somehow is still a great and mesmerizing actor, even when he’s drifting, vacantly, through life. Michael Franco’s director statement reads that ‘Sundown’, is a “character study,” a “study of family dynamics” and an “exploration of all perspectives present in Acapulco.” That’s exactly what Franco delivers.
“Sundown” is now showing in cinemas.
Email: neill@outloudculture.com