Producers: Michel Franco, Eréndira Núñez and Cristina Velasco   Director: Michel Franco   Screenplay: Michel Franco   Cast: Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Iazua Larios, Henry Goodman, Albertine Kotting McMillan, Samuel Bottomley and Jesús Godines   Distributor: Bleecker Street

Grade: C-

Tim Roth goes through the entirety of Michel Franco’s film looking morose and depressed, and most viewers are likely to share his despondency.  “Sundown” is about as egregious a (sun)downer as a film can be, and it offers minimal insight to go along with the bleakness.  Moreover, after reveling in ambiguity for the majority of its running-time, it tosses in a revelation at the end that explains the protagonist’s doom-laden demeanor, and by making the explanation so explicit undermines the sense of existential angst that made it at all interesting. 

Roth is Neil, a member of a wealthy British family on vacation in Acapulco (the film was actually shot in France, perhaps because it was more convenient, but maybe because its portrait of the Mexican resort is hardly tourist-friendly).  He’s accompanied by Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and youngsters Colin (Samuel Bottomley) and Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan).  At first one might take them for his wife and children, but they’re soon identified as his sister and her children.  The latter three appear to be enjoying themselves, but Neil is dour and withdrawn.

Tragedy intervenes when Alice gets a call with news that her mother has suddenly died.  She, Richard and Alexa immediately book passage back to London, but Neil claims that he’d left his passport at the hotel and will catch the next flight.  But he has no intention of leaving.  He takes a sleazy room, lolls around the beach with local ne’er-do-wells and takes up with Bernice (Iazua Larios). 

Alice becomes concerned and returns with the family lawyer (Henry Goodman) to prod him to return.  Dully unemotional, he refuses.  When Alice is on her way back to the airport, her taxi is attacked by some of Neil’s beach pals, intending to kidnap her; but she dies in the assault.  Neil is suspected of complicity in the attempt and jailed in a filthy, overcrowded prison.  Even this seems to disturb him only slightly, but finally he’s released, agrees to turn over the family business to Alice’s children, and returns to his life with Bernice.  But it soon is made clear—in a plot turn that’s meant to be devastating but instead blunts the film’s hitherto enigmatic mood with obviousness—why he’s been so persistently downcast and defeatist.

One has to respect the sad, solemn sense of despair with which Roth invests Neil: it might be a one-note performance, but he certainly conveys the character’s overwhelming glumness convincingly.  And while no one else in the cast makes much of an impression, the languid editing by Franco and Oscar Figeurosa Jara makes no concession to relieving the gloomy, deadening tone.  The production and costume designs by Claudio Ramirez Castelli and Gabriela Fernández and the cinematography of Yves Cape are similarly of a piece with the picture’s bleakness; even when the locales are ritzy, they look drab and unappealing.

As a portrait of misery, “Sundown”—a title that forecasts how the film will end—is eminently successful.  Unfortunately it’s likely merely to make a viewer feel as miserable as its protagonist.