Sun­down – first-look review

“Who hurt Michel Fran­co?” is a ques­tion prompt­ed by the Mex­i­can director’s sadis­tic brand of cin­e­ma. He treats his char­ac­ters like ants under a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, let­ting them scur­ry around for a lit­tle before the sun ris­es and he then mer­ci­less­ly fries them to death.

Franco’s one ide­o­log­i­cal posi­tion seems to be that life is beset by ran­dom acts of vio­lence and cru­el­ty. With this in mind, the first shot of Sun­down is clas­sic Fran­co to the point of self-par­o­dy. Fish on a ship’s deck gasp for air, slow­ly suf­fo­cat­ing in the sun.

Under the same blue Aca­pul­co sky is a wealthy fam­i­ly made up of Alice (Char­lotte Gains­bourg), Neil (Tim Roth) and two teenage chil­dren. Yves Cape’s cam­era shoots from a detached dis­tance as the fam­i­ly recline on sun loungers, drink mar­gar­i­tas and exist at the slow pace of Brits abroad in a hot country.

Dia­logue is sparse until Alice receives two phone calls in suc­ces­sion. One to say that her moth­er is in hos­pi­tal, the next to say that she has died. Cue a rapid trip to the air­port, but just as the fam­i­ly are about to rush through pass­port con­trol, Neil announces that he’s left his pass­port at the hotel and so has to stay on.

There has been a motif at 2021 Venice Film Fes­ti­val of char­ac­ters who aban­don their lives, seen in Mag­gie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daugh­ter, Hagai Levai’s Scenes From a Mar­riage and, to a point, Har­ry Wootliff’s True Things. Sun­down is most preg­nant with poten­tial when chron­i­cling Tim Roth kick­ing back on the beach with a buck­et of beers, strik­ing up a sweet romance with a local, much younger lady and stay­ing at a basic hotel well below his means.

The lack of sign­post­ing around his dra­mat­ic choice is enter­tain­ing and curi­ous. Roth makes for a typ­i­cal­ly hum­ble pres­ence – a vision of non­cha­lance who betrays none of the expect­ed hand-wring­ing before, dur­ing or after he pulls the cord on pri­or com­mit­ments in order to stake his hand on some­thing new.

Of course, this being a Michel Fran­co movie, it is only a mat­ter of time before the open plains of his future shrink down to a pin­hole. With depress­ing pre­dictabil­i­ty, the direc­tor finds a way to intro­duce vio­lence into pro­ceed­ings, not both­er­ing to seed clues, rather recy­cling his usu­al ​“shit hap­pens” sen­si­bil­i­ty and – like that – an intrigu­ing premise is snuffed out.

There is a lit­tle some­thing extra up the film’s sleeve which, com­bined with Roth’s beau­ti­ful­ly poised per­for­mance, enable more than the usu­al amount of human­i­ty to linger, yet this feel­ing is dwarfed by the frus­tra­tion of watch­ing a sto­ry that is care­ful­ly set up, only to be aban­doned, much like the Ben­nett fam­i­ly at the airport.