Post by Dracula on Jun 5, 2022 13:30:24 GMT -5
Sundown(5/26/2022)
Early this year I saw that this movie I hadn’t heard anything about was playing at the local arthouse. I hadn’t heard much about it otherwise and wasn’t interested enough to go see it but I took note of the title and did catch it when it came to streaming. The film was made by a Mexican filmmaker named Michel Franco, who hasn’t really had much of a breakout hit on the world cinema scene but has worked pretty consistently for the last decade or so with some success. This film is set in Acapulco and focuses on a wealthy British family, who get a call that the wife’s mother is on her death bed prompting them to fly home. However, on what seems like a whim the husband pretends to have forgotten his passport when he gets to the airport and tells his wife he’ll catch the next plane and meet them back home, but instead of doing that he checks into a much cheaper hotel than they were staying in. He calls his wife and says his passport was stolen and he’ll be stuck in Acapulco for the weekend and spends that time hanging out in the poorer sections of the city drinking and flirting with the local women. He does not, however, seem to be doing this in the name of hedonism. Rather the guy seems to just be completely burned out on his privileged life and feels an overwhelming urge to throw caution to the wind and “slum it” for a while and much of the film is about trying to get to the bottom of what is making this guy tick and at the end of the say we get some insights but it’s ultimately left somewhat mysterious. There’s a change in pace going into the third act which moves things along without fundamentally changing the themes, which I’m not sure everyone is going to go along with, but I think it still holds up. It’s hardly an extraordinary film but it’s a decent little small statement.
*** out of Five
Early this year I saw that this movie I hadn’t heard anything about was playing at the local arthouse. I hadn’t heard much about it otherwise and wasn’t interested enough to go see it but I took note of the title and did catch it when it came to streaming. The film was made by a Mexican filmmaker named Michel Franco, who hasn’t really had much of a breakout hit on the world cinema scene but has worked pretty consistently for the last decade or so with some success. This film is set in Acapulco and focuses on a wealthy British family, who get a call that the wife’s mother is on her death bed prompting them to fly home. However, on what seems like a whim the husband pretends to have forgotten his passport when he gets to the airport and tells his wife he’ll catch the next plane and meet them back home, but instead of doing that he checks into a much cheaper hotel than they were staying in. He calls his wife and says his passport was stolen and he’ll be stuck in Acapulco for the weekend and spends that time hanging out in the poorer sections of the city drinking and flirting with the local women. He does not, however, seem to be doing this in the name of hedonism. Rather the guy seems to just be completely burned out on his privileged life and feels an overwhelming urge to throw caution to the wind and “slum it” for a while and much of the film is about trying to get to the bottom of what is making this guy tick and at the end of the say we get some insights but it’s ultimately left somewhat mysterious. There’s a change in pace going into the third act which moves things along without fundamentally changing the themes, which I’m not sure everyone is going to go along with, but I think it still holds up. It’s hardly an extraordinary film but it’s a decent little small statement.
*** out of Five
