Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sundown’ on Hulu, a Minimalist Drama in Which Tim Roth Does a Lot of Nothing, Fascinatingly

Now on Hulu, Sundown reunites director Michel Franco with stars Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg, all of whom previously collaborated on 2015’s Chronic, a similar arthouse melodrama. The new film focuses more intently on Roth, who’s enjoying a bit of an indie-film renaissance with this and the underrated Bergman Island. For Franco, it’s a more palatable follow-up to his controversial and divisive dystopian thriller New Order – but it’s also similarly unflinching in its point-of-view.

SUNDOWN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Neil (Roth) sits in the sun, drinking a beer. He doesn’t say much. It’s a lazy vacation with his sister Alice (Gainsbourg) and her children, Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and Colin (Samuel Bottomley). They’re Londoners in Acapulco, enjoying a plush resort – drinks by the pool, primo cuts of steak for dinner, loads of sunshine. Their languorousness is disrupted by a phone call. Alice answers. It’s her and Neil’s mother. She’s on her way to the hospital. They swiftly pack up and they’re on the shuttle to the airport when another call comes. Alice answers and soon she can’t compose herself. She shoves the phone to Neil, who calmly and unemotionally responds to the news of his mother’s death.

They arrive at the airport just in time to board the first flight out, but Neil can’t find his passport. He says he must’ve left it at the resort. They should go on ahead without him and he’ll get the next flight, he says. He gets in a cab and asks the driver to take him to a hotel, any hotel. They arrive at a grungy place and he’s shown to his room and opens his bag and there’s his passport in the pocket. He walks down to a beachside bar-restaurant and orders a beer. The server brings a bucket of several beers and Neil sits and drinks, speaking minimally and only when necessary. The waves wash up under his feet and there he sits, drinking, inexpressive.

On his walk back to the hotel, he buys a beer from Bernice (Iazua Larios), who runs a bodega. He takes calls and texts from Alice, who’s asking him about cremation and services, and grilling him on the state of his passport. He says it’s lost and he has to go to the consulate. On another night he buys another beer from Bernice, and they hang out together. It becomes a frequent occurrence, Bernice keeping Neil company. He seems like poor company, considering his tight-lipped demeanor, but she appreciates something about him. They have sex and his phone keeps chiming with Alice’s attempts to contact him. After a while he drops his phone in a drawer. He seems weary of it constantly interrupting all the nothing he’s intent on doing.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sundown ideally pairs with Chronic, as long as you don’t mind a double-feature of heavy-duty subject matter.

Performance Worth Watching: Roth is mesmerizing here. This and Bergman Island have thrust him back towards relevance. (The last things most of us saw him in were Twin Peaks: The Return and The Hateful Eight.)

Memorable Dialogue: “What’s wrong with you?” Alice asks. “Nothing,” Neil lies.

Sex and Skin: Male frontal (not Roth); female toplessness; stylized sex scenes, mostly in the dark.

Our Take: Franco and Roth conspire to keep their cards close to their chests in this existential drama. The title Sundown hints at something, but I won’t say what. Neil is switched off, numb. When a man on a jet ski dashes onto the beach and shoots and kills someone nearby as Neil sits with a beer, staring into the middle distance, he barely unfurrows his brow. The film’s small dramatic reveals swell to larger things, things that continue to barely faze the guy. If anything’s happening inside his skull, they manifest only microscopically on the surface.

Elements of who Neil is manifest gradually. It’s tempting to say Franco is stingy, but those elements are Roth’s handholds on a methodical climb to… something. That climb brushes against things that might be guilt or shame, a commentary on economic disparity perhaps, as we learn for sure things that we assume to be true, e.g., that resort they were staying at surely isn’t cheap. It’s oddly fascinating, watching Roth plodding along, doing nothing, neglecting the obvious stuff that needs his attention, forcing us to fill in the blanks of his attempt to break from his reality. Why in the hell is he doing this?

Franco captures the story with a chilly detachment that keeps us at a distance but compelled to observe, knowing just enough to remain involved. Should we judge him for his callousness and deception? The film leads to a climax that seems banal, but after 70-odd minutes of plausible, realistic microdrama – laced with two, maybe three, mildly surreal hallucinations – what did we expect? His brain didn’t get zapped by aliens. His damage is all too real.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Sundown is an absorbing, minimalist drama with a strong performance by Roth.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.