Tim Roth compelling in mysterious Sundown

Tim Roth is compelling as remote, enigmatic husband to Charlotte Gainsbourg in mysterious film Sundown.

Tim Roth in the fiim Sundown

Sundown (MA15+)
In cinemas
★★★★

Anyone fortunate enough to have seen Mexican director Michel Franco’s New Order (2020), which had a disappointingly brief cinema release here, will know that he’s an extremely interesting and challenging filmmaker. That film explored a society wracked with violent social unrest, a world in which class differences and racial tensions exploded in violence. Sundown confirms his reputation: it’s a film that starts simply enough but as it progresses reveals a network of surprises and intrigue.

The set-up seems simple enough. A British couple, Neil (Tim Roth) and Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), is holidaying in a very upmarket resort in Acapulco with two grown children, Colin (Samuel Bottomley) and Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan). We assume that Neil and Alice are a married couple, but before too long Franco disconcertingly undermines our assumptions. At any rate we know that Neil is heir to a highly profitable slaughterhouse and pork production company (how’s that for symbolism?) Not that Neil seems happy; in fact, something is clearly affecting him negatively. Alice, too, seems not to be enjoying her holiday; she’s forever popping pills and is constantly on the phone on calls that are apparently work-related.

When Alice receives news from England that her mother is seriously ill and has been taken to hospital, the four decide to fly home at the first opportunity; but as they head for the airport in a taxi they hear that the mother has died. And then Neil announces that he’s left his passport in the hotel and must go back for it. Has he really forgotten his passport, or does he have another agenda?

With considerable skill, Roth establishes a character who is strangely indifferent to the problems and challenges faced by those around him. Beneath his apparently calm, even stoic, surface we realise that there’s something very wrong with him. Intimations of something dreadful are punctuated by moments of startling violence.

Sundown is a particularly difficult film to write about without spoilers; I shouldn’t reveal any more of an increasingly cryptic narrative.

The film contains mysteries and shocks (in one scene on the beach a gunman riding a jet ski fires at a man standing close to Neil). There’s a sense of dread running through this deeply discomfiting – but gripping – character study. Roth, in his second film with Franco after Chronic (2015), is compelling as the remote, enigmatic protagonist.

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Compartment No 6 (MA15+)
In cinemas
★★★★

Back in 1969 I travelled by overnight train from Moscow to the city then known as Leningrad. On Soviet trains at the time no consideration was given to separating the sexes, and I shared a sleeping compartment with a young Finnish woman, who didn’t seem in any way surprised by having to share such close proximity with a strange man during the night-long journey. This experience so many years ago proves to have been excellent preparation for the Finnish-Russian co-production, Compartment No 6, in which Laura (Seisi Haarla), a gay Finnish archaeology student, finds herself sharing a sleeping compartment on the train travelling from Moscow to Murmansk, via St. Petersburg, with Lyokha (Yuri Borisov), a surly young miner. The film, directed by Finland’s Juho Kuosmanen, unfolds in the late 1990s, although the characters don’t yet have mobile phones (the film Titanic, which was released in 1997, is referenced).

While she was staying in Moscow, Laura had been living in an intimate relationship with Irina (Dinara Drukarova), an older woman with a mean streak; she would humiliate her lover in front of the guests she invites to intellectual get-togethers. Unsurprisingly the relationship has come to an end and though the women had originally planned the trip together, Laura is travelling alone to Murmansk, which is located on the north coast of Russia, above the Arctic Circle. She is making the long journey in order to see rare petroglyphs, 10,000 year old rock paintings.

Lyokha is, at first, unpleasant company. He downs large amounts of cheap vodka, smokes like a chimney and makes ugly, sexist remarks. Laura attempts to avoid him by spending as much time as possible in the dining car, and when the train stops in St. Petersburg she considers giving up her trip and returning to Moscow – but an unwelcoming phone conversation with Irina quickly puts an end to that idea. Gradually the Finnish woman and the Russian man form a tentative bond, a bond that becomes closer when, on another stopover, Lyokha takes her with him to meet his foster mother, an impressive old woman who perhaps represents generations of stalwart Russian survivors of wars and dictatorships.

If Compartment No 6 can be described as a relationship story, or even as a romance, it’s certainly an unusual one. The odd couple at the core of the drama would seem to have little or nothing in common, which is why the film, which shared the Special Jury Prize at Cannes last year with the Iranian film, A Hero, is unexpectedly moving. The dialogue is almost entirely spoken in Russian, except for a scene in which a Finnish tourist joins Laura and Lyokha in their compartment for a short time, even though he doesn’t have the proper ticket; and he repays them with a churlishly petty act of dishonesty.

Haarla and Borisov are excellent as the protagonists of this strangely appealing love story. Their relationship seems utterly true, every nuance and minute shift in the ways in which they react towards one another are convincingly captured, by both the screenplay and by the actors. They succeed in making apparently “ordinary” characters rather extraordinary.

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The Villa (Maison de retraite) (M)
In cinemas
★★★

After a rather unpromising start The Villa, a French film directed by Thomas Gilou, settles down to become a conventionally structured, predictable but quite likeable movie in which a loser brings joy to the people in a retirement home.

Milann (Kev Adams, who co-scripted) owes money to tough guy Moncef (Oussama Kheddam). He wrecks a supermarket where he works and is found guilty of injuring an annoying old lady. Fortunately, Milann’s lifetime friend, Samy (Omar Mebrouk), who shared a room in an orphanage when they were children, is a lawyer and succeeds in getting his sentence reduced to two months community service at Villa Mimosa, a retirement home run by the aggressive Ferrand (Antoine Dulery).

The residents include former boxer Lino (Gerard Depardieu, as charismatic as ever), Alzheimer’s sufferer Alfred (Daniel Prevost, good), Edmond (Jean-Luc Bideau), a gay former diplomat who loves the theatre, blind Leontine who demands of every man “baise-moi!”, and a number of others. Ferrand refuses to allow outside excursions, denying Lino a trip to see a boxing match and Edmond a visit to the theatre. The unfortunate residents are treated as prisoners, “dead before they die” as one character remarks.

Milann eventually realises that none of the inmates have families and that Ferrand is stealing from them. There’s a wildly unconvincing twist in the tail and the film is blatantly contrived. But most of the characters in The Villa are engaging, the performances are good, and Gilou’s heart is certainly in the right place.