Following on from his provocative thriller, New Order, writer-director Michel Franco’s latest, Sundown, is a simmering, suspenseful sharp jolt. Tim Roth (Resevoir Dogs) gives a blackly comic performance in this existential tour-de-force.
Alice and Neil Bennett (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Tim Roth) are the core of a wealthy British family on vacation in Acapulco with younger members Colin and Alexa (Samuel Bottomley and Albertine Kotting McMillan) until a distant emergency cuts their trip short. When one relative disrupts the family’s tight‐knit order, surprising tensions rise to the fore.
Franco’s transgressive feature is somehow simultaneously pitch-perfect and pitiless. The decision to follow Roth’s Neil whose motives are foggy and unclear for the most part, makes for an endlessly compelling and introspective portrait.
Thursday 7th July
82 min
MA15+
Drama
