Acapulco’s picturesque beauty and grimy despair come together in writer-director Michel Franco’s psychological thriller “Sundown.” Franco again teams up here with Tim Roth, who plays Neil Bennett, an heir to a meat-packing fortune in the UK, on holiday with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and family. Cameraman Yves Cape delivers a steady stream of wide shots and abstract-leaning frames that constantly force the viewer to prioritize the macro over the micro.
Franco chooses to portray Acapulco from the point of view of the wealthy white foreigner, in which the lives of the brown locals – both the villains and Neil’s beautiful lover Berenice (Iazua Larios) – are not explored. Still, Franco manages to wave a not-too-subtle finger at the viewers, reminding them to check their assumptions about Neil while keeping that main character’s raison d’être completely hidden. The result: “Sundown” is more of a one-note thought exercise than a fully fleshed out story.
Roth’s delivery isn’t the issue here; neither is the slow pace of the film nor the absence of score. The script feels rather thin and thoughtless in a film that lingers noticeably on the surface. Neil is nothing but short – the number of lines he has can add up to a paragraph in the entire movie. We can barely get a good look at him; his first close-up doesn’t appear until almost halfway through the film.
Ultimately, what “Sundown” most successfully reveals to us is the appearance of Acapulco itself. By the end, Cape has captured the sun hitting this spot on the Pacific coast in dozens of different ways. If only the same amount of light was thrown on one of the characters. Without it, an Acapulco sunscreen is likely to evoke more sensation than “Sundown.”
Sunset
Rated R for graphic violence, sexual content. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theatres.