Obsessively examining crisis in terms of its navigation and interiority, the films of Mexican director Michel Franco confront common human behavior amidst extraordinary events. In the face of his characters’ often truly confounding decisions, Franco’s interest in the indistinct, in the prevarications of men and women in conflict, and in the disparate realities posed by wealth and class divisions, affords him a distinct place in the contemporary cinema. Since his 2009 debut Daniel & Ana, the preoccupations of Franco’s output appear consistent, even as they may at times suggest a cloying violence, which in all its sundry forms, emerges as […]
by Evan Louison on Jan 29, 2022Michel Franco’s Sundown is unsettling tale of existential drift, one that upends the way in which the concept of family is often thematized in narrative films. It’s now given a suitably eerie trailer by its distributor, Bleecker Street. The story involves a brother (Tim Roth) and sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) vacationing at a Mexican resort when sad news arrives from abroad. The sister leaves, the brother stays, and the film’s mysteries concern the brother’s inscrutable motivations. Spasms of violence are expected in any film by the New Order director; those are hinted at by the trailer’s concluding sequence of flash cuts […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 4, 2022