Tim Roth as Neil Bennett in Sundown. Property of Teorema. Courtesy of Bleecker Street
Things are not always as they appear. In Mexican writer/director Michel Franco’s Sundown, Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg play members of a family on vacation in Acapulco, Mexico, in a suspenseful drama where things are not always what they seem.
While the Bennett family – Neil (Tim Roth), Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and teens Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and Colin (Samuel Bottomley) – vacations at a posh beach side resort, their pleasant holiday is interrupted by a family emergency back home in London. Alice is distraught at the news, while Neil’s reaction is muted. At the airport, Neil tells the family he forgot his passport back at the hotel. But rather than delaying everyone, he says he will go to back to retrieve it and then catch the next flight, while the rest of the family...
Things are not always as they appear. In Mexican writer/director Michel Franco’s Sundown, Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg play members of a family on vacation in Acapulco, Mexico, in a suspenseful drama where things are not always what they seem.
While the Bennett family – Neil (Tim Roth), Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and teens Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and Colin (Samuel Bottomley) – vacations at a posh beach side resort, their pleasant holiday is interrupted by a family emergency back home in London. Alice is distraught at the news, while Neil’s reaction is muted. At the airport, Neil tells the family he forgot his passport back at the hotel. But rather than delaying everyone, he says he will go to back to retrieve it and then catch the next flight, while the rest of the family...
- 2/4/2022
- by Cate Marquis
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Writer/director Michel Franco throws his first curveball early during his latest film Sundown. We’ve already spent a bit of time with his quartet of European characters vacationing in Acapulco to make a few assumptions before workaholic Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) leans over to the quietly satisfied Neil (Tim Roth) and thanks him for coming along. Why wouldn’t he have? Isn’t he her husband and her kids’ father? He might be. Perhaps Alice and Neil are in the middle of a separation wherein he only agreed to come to keep up appearances? It’s not like his laconic demeanor is giving anything away, though, so we’ll just have to wait until Franco decides to share the answer. And it won’t be the last time.
This one isn’t like New Order with its propulsive pace moving us forward. Sundown is slow, methodical, and meticulously constructed to...
This one isn’t like New Order with its propulsive pace moving us forward. Sundown is slow, methodical, and meticulously constructed to...
- 9/14/2021
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
Reflection Of all the titles screening on the Lido this year, few had me as concerned and intrigued as Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Reflection. Concerned, because a few friends who’d already seen the director’s latest take on the Russian-Ukrainian war had testified to its unflinching depictions of violence and torture (including and especially one early scene involving a leg and a screwdriver). And intrigued, because it was Vasyanovich’s follow up to his Atlantis, winner of the Orizzonti lineup in 2019, a haunting excursion into a bombed-out no-man’s-land that cartwheeled between moments of extreme brutality and flickering glimpses of empathy. That film was set in a not-so-distant future where Ukraine had emerged victorious—and shattered—from the war with Russia. Reflection kicks off instead in 2014, the year the conflict broke out. Yet Vasyanovych doesn’t throw us to the battlefield from the start; for a short while, it leaves...
- 9/9/2021
- MUBI
In the span of a year when everyone’s been on edge, prolific Mexican director Michel Franco managed to nuke our comfort zones not once, but twice, delivering separate provocations at back-to-back editions of the Venice Film Festival. In 2020, he won the Silver Lion for powder-keg thriller “New Order,” and now, he returns with the relatively understated — but still shocking — “Sundown.” While both are icy examinations of violence, inequality and explosive class conflict in contemporary Mexico, Franco could hardly be accused of repeating himself. Where “New Order” was in-your-face, “Sundown” returns to the controversial auteur’s earlier, arm’s-length approach.
The movie unfolds entirely in Acapulco, where a man (Tim Roth), a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and two grown “kids” are shown consuming: They swim; they sail; they eat out at posh restaurants where the waiter brings out the steaks for your approval before cooking them. These four are a family,...
The movie unfolds entirely in Acapulco, where a man (Tim Roth), a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and two grown “kids” are shown consuming: They swim; they sail; they eat out at posh restaurants where the waiter brings out the steaks for your approval before cooking them. These four are a family,...
- 9/5/2021
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Michael Franco’s latest collaboration with the actor sees Roth on a Mexican beach holiday, blissfully unaffected by grief
Neil Bennett is enjoying a nice holiday at a Mexican resort with his sister, Alice, and her two teenage kids. They’ve got the sea view and the infinity pool and a hotel entertainer to sing for them over supper. Then all of a sudden, disaster. The phone rings; their mother’s dead. So Neil does what any sensible son would do in his position. He pretends he’s lost his passport and therefore can’t fly home for the funeral. The woman’s dead anyway, so what does she care?
Clearly it’s wrong to laugh at Michel Franco’s brilliant Sundown but I’m afraid that I did all the same – several times while watching the movie; several more times when remembering it afterwards. It’s the funniest film...
Neil Bennett is enjoying a nice holiday at a Mexican resort with his sister, Alice, and her two teenage kids. They’ve got the sea view and the infinity pool and a hotel entertainer to sing for them over supper. Then all of a sudden, disaster. The phone rings; their mother’s dead. So Neil does what any sensible son would do in his position. He pretends he’s lost his passport and therefore can’t fly home for the funeral. The woman’s dead anyway, so what does she care?
Clearly it’s wrong to laugh at Michel Franco’s brilliant Sundown but I’m afraid that I did all the same – several times while watching the movie; several more times when remembering it afterwards. It’s the funniest film...
- 9/5/2021
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
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