If ever a movie telegraphed its intentions from the opening shot, that movie was Michel Franco’s “Sundown.” The shot in question: A close-up of fish gasping for air under the careful, creepy eye of Tim Roth, who, by the time 80 or so minutes have gone by, we wouldn’t dare share a cold beer with despite his character remaining as much of an enigma as the movie around him.
What is it that we learn about him in that time? Not nearly enough concrete details that mentioning them here would risk spoiling the film (to the extent that such a moody piece of implication-streaked storytelling can even be spoiled). Here’s what I can confidently say:
His name is Neil.
He’s linked to a rather large empire or fortune, the kind you hire lawyers to manage.
And he isn’t exactly the most forthright protagonist you’ll meet in a movie this year.
That’s about it. When it comes to the rest, we only have our assumptions and suspicions, which is what makes “Sundown” a far more involving depiction of scorched-earth scheming than Franco’s last effort, 2021’s “New Order,” while remaining just as clinically staged. You could view “Sundown” as the second part of a diptych with that blunt instrument of a movie, at least when it comes to the story’s initial maneuvers – moments of bliss rudely interrupted by crisis – and the false sense of security ascribed to its characters by way of high status.
In “Sundown” that status looks like a British family lounging, working on their tans and sipping on margaritas at an Acapulco resort that might’ve been a Bond villain’s lair in another era. It looks like paradise but feels like purgatory, especially when the camera shifts to Roth sitting at the edge of an infinity pool, either biding his time or waiting for it to run out. Tension is pressing in on all sides, but from where? What’s Franco playing at? One of our only hints comes when Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) quietly thanks her brother for deciding to join in the excursion.
But maybe the timing of an ill-fated call, sending the vacationers scurrying to leave as Alice breaks down from tragic news (few actors break down more harrowingly than Gainsbourg), turns out to be another clue. Neil maintains a calm composure that invites skepticism, and when he insists on staying in Mexico ostensibly to search for his lost passport only to check in at another hotel, whatever doubts we have about him start to be confirmed. Before long, the question of who Neil is doesn't seem as pressing as what he might be capable of doing.
“Sundown” is a movie built from drawn-out observations and a sense of horror that’s impossible to place but which laps at Franco’s images like the waves upon Acapulco’s shores. It’s insistently elusive, and the lack of clarity as questions pile up and suspicions grow often borders on aggravating. Once the movie’s sharper edge begins to unsheath itself, however, there forms a glint of grim truth to Neil’s sullen beachside wanderings, especially in how he spectates a burst of horrific violence that makes the Pacific’s crystal-blue waters run briefly red. One might think Neil’s whiteness affords him a sort of shield in that moment. One might also think “Sundown” is out to reveal more about us than its characters.
Franco’s Mexican background notwithstanding, his combination of story and setting here is curious. What few narrative pivots there are in “Sundown” turn out to be jarringly high-leverage, the gears greased with white-collar troubles better suited for sleek meeting rooms than sandy cabanas. A fair number of shots find the largely static camera simply watching Neil as he slumps over beach chairs and lumbers down Acapulco’s streets, yet for how much it feigns itself as a study of comfort in seeming isolation, it conjures more gravitas with its melodies of interconnectedness—between people, between governments, between society’s high, low and middle…or, perhaps more to the point, what we presume to be society’s high, low and middle. Here is a director whose characters invite our disdain rather than our loyalty, whose tranquil settings become tinderboxes waiting to burst.
It’s worth wondering what he expects us to find in the rubble. Catharsis? Scorn? A confirmation or rejection of bias? That this film of scant character textures and amorphous motivations begs us to fill in its white spaces will no doubt leave some viewers frustrated at what could be seen as an incomplete work. But what are movies if not blank canvases on which to project ourselves? By the end you’re likely to find yourself in a similar position as those fish from the beginning, gasping for narrative oxygen even as the consequential immediacy of the moment has reared its head several times over.
"Sundown" is rated R for sexual content, violence, language and some graphic nudity. It opens in some San Antonio theaters Friday.
Starring Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Iazua Larios, Henry Goodman.
Directed by Michel Franco
2022
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