Sundown
Sundown
Director: Michel Franco
Starrings: Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Iazua Larios, Henry Goodman, Albertine Kotting McMillan, Samuel Bottomley, James Tarpey, Mónica Del Carmen
Country: France, Mexico, Sweden
Year 2021
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“I'm not hiding.”
The reaction to having a serious disease is different for each individual. Life breaks up; the relationship with oneself and with loved ones needs revision. Verification of one's identity is vital both for the re-reading of one's past, both to adapt to the anguish of the present, and for the awareness of a lost future. Above all, having a disease means:
“The person may feel that they no longer know who he is. He can go into crisis in his sense of identity. " (1)
One type of feeling of identity is locked into oneself, keeping the disease hidden from the family. The justification could be in good faith. They do not have to suffer, and they do not have to have the same behaviour as well.
Could a person, with a deathly illness and just a little time to live, goes on holiday to Acapulco?
Choosing Acapulco could be a definitive solution without waiting for the disease to progress.
Acapulco is a destination for thousands of tourists, both Americans and Europeans. It is a beautiful place, with wonderful views. Over the years, however, it has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world:
“In recent years Acapulco has earned the unfortunate reputation of being the one of the most violent cities in the country.Within Mexico no tourism destination has seen its reputation hurt worse by violence. In 2017 Mexico recorded a record-breaking 29,168 homicides. The state of Guerrero logged 2,529 murders, nearly a thousand of which occurred in Acapulco. A Chilean tourist was killed in January 2018, caught in the crossfire in gang-related shooting. In April, 2018 a man was murdered in broad daylight on La Caleta, one of the city’s signature beaches. By the end of 2018 874 people were killed in Acapulco. The violence has continued. In February 2019 a tourist from the U.S. was shot and killed. Over the past decade violent crime has emerged as one of Acapulco’s defining characteristics.” (2)
Terrifying numbers. Massacres are executed by the narcos. Drug traffickers impose a control system based on aggression and abuse. Even visitors are hit and sometimes become victims. Killers kill on the beach without any fear.
The government's response is fragile. There are too many links between criminality and the authorities. The latter is exaggeratedly weak and inadequate. Narcos take advantage of the power void to threaten and take revenge.
The only choice was to deploy the army. Armed soldiers walk along the coast and other tourist spots. However,the result is pitiful:
“The heavy military presence doesn’t instill a lot of confidence ...”
“The strategy of flooding the streets with army trucks and police patrols, by contrast, hasn’t yielded a tangible drop in violent crime.“ (2)
Excluding the case of the Philippines with President Duterte, deploying troopers is impractical. The strict rules of engagement only threaten the innocent.
The 78th Venice Film Festival has presented Sundown, the film by Mexican director Michel Franco about depression caused by an impending death due to a fatal illness, set in Acapulco.
A lovely sea, fish on a boat, two boys swimming. A super-luxury hotel, built overhanging the waves. Tourists sunbathe lying under the beach umbrella. A massage soothes. A waiter serves cocktails. It is the beginning of the film. These people on holiday in Acapulco are Neil Bennett and his sister, Alice. Besides there are the two children of Alice: Colin, a gay teenager, and Alexa, a cheeky girl. They are a wealthy English family. The Bennett brothers run a very profitable pig farm with their mother. They are relaxed, they are calm, they are having fun. A gorgeous sunset. Neil is in the hammock. A mobile phone rings annoyingly. Alice replies. Their mother died. They rush to the airport to return home. Before check-in, Neil notices that he has lost his passport. He cannot leave, so he returns to Acapulco, but not to the opulent hotel. He chooses a simple inn near the beach. He avoids prostitutes, he just desires to be free. However, he can't resist Berenice's charm, an attractive and honest Mexican woman, who falls in love with Neil. Alice calls him but he has never answered. Neil cut off all contact with family, friends and work. Why this behaviour? They appeared relaxed and happy. Actually, Neil was hiding a creepy secret. Because he does not want to tell his family the truth, he flees.
The themes - disease, the bourgeois family, death, brutality - are exalted in the background of Acapulco and Mexico. In addition, there is the metaphorical one with the pigs.
Michel Franco's inspiration is Acapulco. Acapulco has a role in his private life. The director describes how the city affected his existence and the film:
“It’s a mix of a few elements. I wrote the movie in the middle of a deep personal crisis. I was questioning where I am in personal aspects of my life, and for the first time I started to think that life isn’t infinite, and there’s an end to things. This happened after a trip I made to Acapulco, with a girlfriend, and as we drove from the hotel at 8pm for dinner, I was stopped at gunpoint by some federal policemen in a very aggressive way. They were wondering if my girlfriend was in danger — if she was with me against her will. They wanted me to get out of the vehicle. I knew it
was the last thing I should do. My girlfriend didn’t understand what was happening, she told me to do as they say. I managed to get out of the situation by driving away, and they followed us, and threatened us, but we made it safely back to the hotel. This made me sad, because Acapulco is one of my favorite places.” (3)
Despite the luxury resorts in Acapulco, the dangers are constant, even for tourists. In the interview, it is clear how his personal life experience influenced his writing. Michel Franco is in Acapulco on holiday with his girlfriend. He is going through a period of depression. Franco flees to the hotel during a police check. It is the Sundown storyline. Neil is depressed, is on holiday in Acapulco and his sister's escape turns into a drama.
It is life in a Mexican city. The population is terrified of violence, both from drug cartels and federal agents.
“It’s a place in Mexico that I know the best from traveling there as a young person, sometimes I’d stay for as long as a month over the New Year holiday. It breaks my heart to see how much the place has changed. It’s often rated one of the top most dangerous cities in the world, which sometimes affects tourists, but often it doesn’t. But it’s ruined, the paradise it was, and I’m not talking about the Acapulco of Sinatra and Elvis Presley. The decay symbolizes a lot of the larger decay in my country. There’s a lot of tension in Acapulco right now but it ended up being very friendly during the shoot. I guess I wanted to prove that it was the same Acapulco I remember from when I was younger.” (3)
The director specifies it: "It’s often rated one of the top most dangerous cities in the world" and it certainly has a foundation. Crime has demolished the ancient seduction of the city, leading it to decay: "The decay symbolizes a lot of the larger decay in my country".
In Western countries, the increase in delinquency in cities is one of the worst problems because it has an effect on the poorer classes. The wealthy, the bourgeois, the globalized can abandon the riskiest areas and entrench themselves in impenetrable fortresses. The Mayors face it in a fake and artificial way, never finding plausible solutions. On the contrary, thuggery causes the end of several historical and cultural realities. Acapulco is one of them. Michel Franco's thought is emblematic. The metropolises, without security, destroy the peaceful coexistence of their inhabitants:
“Crime and violence are part of life in Mexico — you either move somewhere else or you try to understand. So as a storyteller, I have to explore that reality.” (3)
The acceptance of unlawful acts, robberies, murderers, is an integral and ineluctable part of life. This attitude is a passive approach to resolving the issue. Is crime like a sin? Is it possible to coexist with it?
The geopolitical aspect is contiguous with the intimate and social ones, starting with the rich, well off and rather snobbish family. Living in luxury does not eliminate communication difficulties. The director confirms this:
“I guess the fact that at the end of the day, all the tools they’re supposed to have, which come from money, education, a privileged life — they mean nothing because they keep making the most basic mistakes, not being able to communicate with each other. To me, it’s always fascinating how much you can harm someone you love. Again, these are people who are supposed to be able to get their ideas and feelings across, but they keep messing it up.” (3)
The Bennetts are well-off, with industrial activity and prestigious studies. Yet, they are unable to communicate, speak, or respect each other. Indeed, Neil offends, denigrates his family and their love.
Neil's main flaw is selfishness. He wears out Alice, his grandchildren, his friends. He insults the death of his mother. He cowardly deceives Berenice. He is egocentric, he considers the events of his life central to everyone while the needs of others are insignificant. He is impassive, apathetic and unfriendly, but mostly nasty. Who does it look like?
As long as he was with his family, Neil appeared melancholy but lived a normal life. Alone, he becomes lazy, indolent, listless, abulic. He obviously has a preoccupied motive; it is a powerful one, but is his behaviour appropriate? A patient reacts by thinking of his former times, putting the present on standby and cancelling the future. Yet Neil has opposite reflections: he cancels the present and future, curses the past.
Neil is self-destructive, cynical, psychologically corrupt, disillusioned, ruthless, ungrateful, unstable, conceited and vain, he is indispensable to the story.
It is the presentation of the primary character. The conflict is Neil's secret and the antagonist is his dislike and his meanness. The plots twist are many and intertwined.
The structure continues linear, but despite expectations, the pace often stops. The emotional path remains banned by Neil's indifference.
His indifference frustrates the tension of the plot: nothing happens, although Acapulco offers so many opportunities. Acapulco's bloody environment is not enough to create tension. Anticipations are dispersed. Spreading out on the beauties of the city, on the crowded beaches, on the nightlife, on the diving competition, disinterested in Neil's fate.
The pigs increase the tension. They are numerous and are in the most disparate places. There are pigs on the beach, in jail, on the road. However, there are none, they exist only in Neil's eyes. This connotative editing intensifies the pace even in the most silent moments. The pig is an obvious symbol.
Pig farming is a family business. Pigs are the means by which they get rich. Thanks to pigs, they can afford luxurious hotels in fascinating areas. Pigs are also unclean animals. In Deuteronomy:
“... even the pig, which has a bipartite claw but does not ruminate, you will consider it unclean. You will not eat their meat and you will not touch their corpses. " (De 14,8).
In the semantic convention, the word 'pig' is used in a derogatory tone as a synonym for degenerate, muddy, unclean, scummy, swine, unmoral.
It is easy to understand the metaphor of the pigs.
Pigs are his past, the explanation for his richness, his current contempt, the guilt of loneliness, and perhaps even the explanation for his illness. It is his filthy existence.
The pigs in his unconscious will take him straight to hell.
He also sees pigs in jail. Neil is suspected of being the instigator of his sister's attempted kidnapping. Neil is arrested. Criminals crowd the jails. However, Neil's apathy is unchanged.
He has the same look even during the quarrel with Alice. Neil is on the beach. His sister is worried because he has never replied to her. At the water's edge, she attacks him, yells in his face, injures him, but he is unbreakable. Neil is filmed from behind, sitting, he does not care.
He looks the same when he stares at the freshly caught fish at the bottom of the boat. They are about to die and Neil watches them dumbfounded.
According to Michael Franco, Neil can be grumpy because he is free, and freedom includes damaging people who love him. It is an impeccable technical judgment, but without any morality or without distinction between good and evil:
“... he's some sort of passenger he's drifing, he's trying to protect the people who he loves his beloved ones but he ends up harming them and that fascinates but he's making a choice and everyone should be entitled to make this choice but i thin then this brings us to thanks for saying it has many layers but we can tackle the movie from many perspectives and one definitely is who is free who knows freedom nobody's really free i'm free when i'm alone … but nobody's free and certainly proves this ...” (4)
The lack of the ethical element, sought and desired by the author himself, gives style to the film but deprives it of humanity. Neil should be an angel, to be pitied and comforted, but instead he turns into a villain. It is futile to search for an atmosphere, a deus ex machina, to solve the problem of the story. In fact, the ending is still ambiguous. Neil proceeds with his hopeless pilgrimage, this time humiliating Berenice. However, there is also exciting news: Neil's journey is short and the film is finally over.
Luciano Sandrin, Psicologia del malato. Comprendere la sofferenza accompagnare la speranza, EDB, Bologna, translated by the author
Niellatrice Parish Flannery, How Acapulco Exemplifies Mexico's Ongoing Security Crisis,https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanielparishflannery/2019/03/21/how-acapulco-exemplifies-mexicos-ongoing-security-crisis-part-1/?sh=41c9026a7b57, 21 March 2019
Pressbook
Directors: Natasha Merkulova e Aleksey Chupov
Starrings: Yuriy Borisov, Timofey Tribuntsev, Aleksandr Yatsenko
Country: Russia, Francia, Estonia
Year 2021