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Big Screen review Director Jonathan Nossiter's debut film Sunday is so artful in its withholding of basic information that any straightforward telling of its story would be a disservice to the potential viewer. Nossiter and his co-scenarist James Lasdun have so carefully fragmented their narrative and laced it with indirection that what could have been a rather soapy story of two lost souls reaching out for each other becomes an engrossing, mysterious and somewhat Pinteresque construct, wherein the truth is elusive and identity mutable. Suffice it to say that one Sunday in Queens, a past-her-prime actress (Lisa Harrow), that is to say a woman over 40, runs into a man she recognizes as the famous film director Matthew Delacorte (David Suchet). At first he seems indecisive about acknowledging this recognition, not an inappropriate reaction, but the woman is so aggressively certain that any denial on his part would be tactless. She so desperately wants him to be Delacorte, an emissary from a better time she knew before she became stranded in Queens, that even if he isn't &emdash; and we suspect he isn't, though that will remain uncertain until later in the film &emdash; merely by being passive he becomes the man. But it seems likely that this alleged Matthew has just emerged from a homeless shelter and is, in fact, an ex-IBM employee named Oliver who's recently been downsized into anonymity. He certainly seems &emdash; with his mercurial expression, alternately scared rabbit and secretive owl &emdash; to be hiding something. But then Madeleine, the actress, may not be quite what she seems either; her estranged husband Ben (Larry Pine), whom Matthew-Oliver meets after she's taken him home for some wine-fueled, (seemingly) confessional conversation followed by furtive sex, claims she once sliced his torso with some garden shears. He doesn't seem quite on the level either. Suchet, whose most famous role has been as Hercule Poirot for PBS, gives a wonderfully subtle performance in the difficult role of a man slowly drowning in angry bewilderment. And the Nossiter-Lasdun screenplay is impeccable, right up to its flatly nonexistent ending. But that's a quibble. When a film is this original and brimming with privileged moments, one can forgive a lack of resolution. Sunday' is compelling because it's full of lies By Chris Kaltenbach Lies are a lousy thing on which to base a relationship, much less a life. That's why the characters of Jonathan Nossiter's "Sunday," the grand-jury-prize winner at the 1997 Sundance Festival, are doomed from the start. It's also why the film they inhabit is so compellingly labyrinthine, so endlessly intriguing and so ultimately frustrating. Labyrinthine, because the lies and fabrications are piled on so thickly that you won't know who -- or what -- to believe. Intriguing because that uncertainty demands that you pay attention. And frustrating because that uncertainty never lets up, even when the final credits start rolling. Recently fired from his job with IBM, Oliver (David Suchet) is an overweight, balding, late-middle-aged man reduced to living in a homeless shelter, where he rarely talks with anyone and is best known for spraying Lysol on everything. While walking the street one Sunday, he's approached by an attractive middle-aged woman carrying a potted plant nearly as tall as she is. "You're Matthew Delacorta," Madeleine (Lisa Harrow) tells him, and with that, the tale begins. At first, Oliver seems uncomfortable with this case of mistaken identity, but not uncomfortable enough to correct her. Madeleine, it turns out, is a struggling actress whose best days are behind her; of late, reduced to playing "a living dead mutant," she laments, "I guess I'm too old to play a human being." Matthew Delacorta is a borderline-famous director she once met briefly. Oliver and Madeleine are those saddest of souls, lonelyhearts looking for a little companionship. Both hope they can get what they need from the other, but neither is trusting enough to let that happen. Suchet, known to TV audiences for playing Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot on PBS, and Harrow, a three-decade veteran of Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company, are riveting as they try to break through each other's defenses. Above all else, both characters are afraid to push too hard, lest it all disappear. Oliver lives his lie from the start, which explains why he's willing to believe Madeleine is just as devious; when her estranged husband (Larry Pine, in a demonically sleazy turn) shows up and claims she once attacked him, Oliver believes it. Oliver tells Madeleine the truth about him, although he tells her under the guise of tapping into his acclaimed storytelling skills. From that point on, Madeleine's never sure who to believe, and neither are we. But like Oliver and Madeleine, we believe the truth must be out there, somewhere. It's a tribute to Nossiter's script (co-written by James Lusdan) and the actors' talent that we care about the characters that much, even if they're not being exactly honest with us. Any Other Day of the Week is Fine Alice Smith The winner of the 1997 Grand Prize at Sundance is a poetic, tragicomic fantasy about fractured lives being pieced together on a frigid Sunday in Queens, New York. Middle-aged Oliver (David Suchet), an ex-tax accountant who has recently lost hold of his middle-class life, does not want to fit in at his new home -- the men's Presbyterian shelter. While the other residents gabble over breakfast, he remains under the bed covers in his pajamas, dreading the empty day that yawns ahead of him. When he finally gets up, he keeps himself separate -- he does not respond to the other men's jokes, he sprays the filthy bathroom sink with Lysol, and then he dresses for the meaningless day in a shirt and tie. But on this Sunday he meets Madeline (the exquisite Lisa Harrow), an out-of-luck (and possibly out-of-her-mind) English actress who is carrying an enormous potted plant. She mistakes him, through the leaves, for a famous art film director with whom she has worked in the past. He does not set her straight. In no time, they are lunching in a diner she thinks would be a good location for his next movie -- about a homeless man. For the rest of the day, and for the rest of this funny, intensely moving, scary, dream-like film, Oliver and Madeline attempt to nurture their mutual fantasy. Director Jonathan Nossiter and writer James Lasdun have created an ideal world -- emotionally inexplicit, perfectly detailed -- in which their story can resonate. And that world is given a real rhythm and texture by cutting, throughout the day, to the men from the shelter: one man keeps hopeful watch over a provocatively locked trunk at the trash heap; another (Jared Harris in a nice, unshowy performance) surreptitiously masturbates on the street; a third sings popular arias into a portable microphone at the subway station. This is a wonderfully understated film, with wonderful acting throughout. By Steven Rea Some French chanteuse is chanteusing on the sound track in the opening moments of ``Sunday,'' as dark turns to dawn over a cityscape of New York. It's a desolate swath of New York, though: Queens, on a wintry Sunday morning. ``Sunday, day of nothingness,'' laments the character played by David Suchet, his voice cut with bitterness and fear, a little later in Jonathan Nossiter's remarkable film. Suchet is a paunchy, balding victim of corporate downsizing who finds himself sharing quarters with a squad of men in a shelter (the New Life, it's called). They are men struggling to get it together in a place with hard rules and thin mattresses; a few have minimum-wage jobs, one sings on subway platforms, and others, like Suchet's Oliver, face a future as bleak as the gray cold sky. And so, after rousing himself from bed, eating breakfast, throwing on his coat, he steps onto the streets beneath that sky to wander until curfew time, when he and his fellow boarders are allowed back inside. On a corner, a woman carrying a large, half-dead plant sees Oliver and shouts ``Matthew!'' It's a case of mistaken identity: Madeleine Vesey (Lisa Harrow), a British actress who hasn't had much of a run in the job department lately, recognizes the bundled-up man with the glasses as Matthew Delacorta, a famous director she once met in London. Oliver stares blankly as this vibrant woman chatters away, then decides to oblige her misconception. There is an invitation to breakfast in a diner (like the shelter, its name speaks of rosy days: the Blue Sky Diner) and the promise of company. ``Sunday,'' a first feature by Nossiter (who wrote the screenplay with writer James Lasdun, adapting one of his short stories), is about what happens in the course of the day to these two lonely people. It is a film, quiet and finely calibrated, that speaks about isolation and longing, and the lies people tell one another (and themselves) to try to get to some emotional or spiritual truth. Although ``Sunday'' is decidedly, and beautifully, cinematic, employing shifting angles and point-of-view shots, there's a theater-like quality to the work that springs from the nature of the piece itself - essentially a two-character drama propelled by dialogue, not action. Nossiter doesn't get it all right: The role of Madeleine's ex-husband (played by Larry Pine) feels a mite contrived; he's a volatile plot device more than a person. And there are moments, exchanges, that are perhaps too crafted. But Suchet (the English actor of PBS's ``Poirot'' series, 40 pounds heavier and using effortlessly flat American intonations) and Harrow (the anchor of Gillian Armstrong's ``The Last Days of Chez Nous'') bring incredible intelligence and bravery to their performances. ``Sunday'' may have its flaws, but they are flaws that come from artistic ambition, not waywardness. This is a small, forceful, haunting picture. |
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