When a filmmaker is going through an existential crisis, it is better to spare the public their doubts. Michel Franco broke the rule and he did well. Sundown is a film with enigmas, where the silences are eloquent and the banality of life magnified on the edge of the precipice.
A wealthy English heiress (Charlotte Gainsbourg), her two children and her brother (Tim Roth), lasciviously bask in a luxury hotel in Acapulco. The city, dear to the filmmaker, is a character in the film: “I am very attached to Acapulco, says Michel Franco and it pains me to see that the city represents the current decadence of the country, this generalized violence, accepted as normal. This is why putting the character of Tim Roth, who is going through an existential crisis, in an environment where life is no longer worth anything, where you can die on the beach without anyone looking back, seemed to me the ideal setting for making a film, where the interior of the character and the context merge.”
Between two margaritas, reality catches up with them, a family drama: it is urgent to return to London. The brother forgot his passport at the hotel, he has to stay. Begins a wandering in this city that Michel Franco adores but that he no longer recognizes since it is the daily theater of violence that has become the norm.
As silent as he is a virtuoso, Tim Roth embodies a character who seems indifferent to the misfortune of others. He stays in Mexico, doesn’t respond to his sister, sips beers on a popular beach, and even falls in love with a woman younger than him. Michel Franco gently eroticizes this carelessness of a man who dares to taste an inconvenient freedom.
“Freedom is very beautiful, but we always pay a high price for freedom.”
Michael Francoon franceinfo
“We are subject to the expectations that others have of us and that’s sad. I wanted to make a film that wasn’t cerebral, a very lively film, that the audience feel the beach, eat what the character is eating. taste. It’s organic, but how to transmit it to the public, it’s not obvious.” declared Michael Franco.
Why does this man cut ties with his loved ones, what is the meaning of his escape, can he survive the ambient violence? the spectator will discover it in time, following the haunting rhythm of a carnal film, where the stolen moments of happiness are as beautiful as they are fragile.