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See Magazine Early in Sunday, an actress talks to a director she'd met once before, in England, and recalls something he said to her - something that she'd always treasured: "Doubt is the protoplasm of all real art." It's an odd statement, but it becomes more poignant through hindsight - because the man she's speaking to is not the man she thinks he is. Sunday is a humble but breathtaking film about doubt. It shows how doubt defines and alters the relationship of two people over a single day. And it shows how doubt affects the way we see ourselves: doubt in our abilities, in our futures. It begins in great confusion and ends with its breath still held. The only sure thing is the honesty and directness of the story and its characters. Madeline Vesey is a British actress whose career has stalled and left her in Queens, New York. She bumps into Oliver, a film director, and wines and dines him, possibly hoping to land a part, possibly hoping to land in bed, or possibly to reminisce about a time when she felt her life was going somewhere. Oliver's life isn't going anywhere either. He's unemployed and living in a men's shelter run by a local church. In fact, Oliver isn't even Oliver - he's a computer programmer named Matthew, a recent victim of IBM's downsizing. He isn't sure what to think of Madeline's advances and every time he tries to tell her she's got the wrong man, he somehow only deepens his impact on her life. At times the movie threatens to become a simple thriller (there are jealous exes, and hedge clippers are mentioned as implements of violence), but every time you think you're comfortably within a genre flick, director Jonathan Nossiter casts you into doubt again. It's largely due to the script, which Nossiter co-wrote with James Lasdun. The conversations are natural, easy yet cautious; the characters serve themselves, instead of becoming cogs in the wheel of someone else's plot. But credit also goes to Harrow and Suchet, two veteran actors who manage to breathe depth into two complex yet oblique characters. Watch them move around one another, trying to read each others' thoughts, figure out how much they know or what they're going to do or say next. They're driven by doubt and their guesses - like yours - are seldom on the mark. Nossiter paints Queens in alternately subdued and alarming colors, as if the drab exterior lives of Sunday's characters lead them to imagine a world drawn from a palette of lava lamps and Jones sodas. He plays with your perspective in the first segment of the film by refusing to carry his images from shot to shot or ground the action with a single person. It's a subtle technique, pioneered by Carl Theodore Dreyer in his silent Passion of Joan of Arc in 1928 and not really used all that much since. It creates doubt - which is, in the end, the protoplasm of life. Love and angst on a 'Sunday' afternoon From Reviewer Paul Tatara (CNN) -- "Sunday," which went over big this year at Sundance, is one proudly peculiar movie. I'm a proponent of nothing if not proud peculiarities (and the letter "P"), but director/co-writer Jonathan Nossiter seems so intent on displaying his disregard for conventional narrative and character development, he eventually loses sight of the fact that large groups of people are going to be sitting there watching his work one day. "Sunday" is peculiar, but it never really adds up to a movie. One day, Oliver, a newly homeless (and newly fired) IBM executive, leaves the shelter he's living in to wander the streets of Queens, New York. Soon, he is stopped on the street by Madeleine, a beautiful but time-wearied actress. She mistakes Oliver for a man named Matthew Delacorta, a theater director she once worked with in England. Having nothing much else to do with his time, and quite pleased to be spending the afternoon with an attractive woman, Oliver takes her up on the fantasy. The day escalates into a series of partially truth-based delusions that draw the two closer and closer. Eventually, there's a strangely desperate sex scene at the top of the staircase in Madeleine's rather drab home. Not long after that, Madeleine's estranged husband shows up at her doorstep with the couple's adopted Korean daughter in tow, thus complicating things considerably for Oliver. From there, things just pretty much continue until there's no more film in the projector. Nossiter is trying to get at something quite interesting -- how our perceptions of the people we love are often a series of carefully composed lies and half-truths -- but the screenplay itself is basically a series of lies and half-truths. You're off-balance the whole time because you never know if anybody is being straight with you. This is fun (and funny) at first, but after a while you've had enough. The trick starts to feel like Nossiter is playing his cards way too carefully for us to ever understand exactly what he thinks about these characters. There's never any breakthrough to a new understanding of the situation, just the situation itself. That aside, the two lead performances are quite good, with Harrow often approaching great. She has a radiant face and strong-shouldered way of carrying herself that reminds me of Colleen Dewhurst. Her Madeleine is a fairly disturbing creation, though. We never know for certain if she really believes that Oliver is the director she once worked with. At times, it seems that she's just playing games with him (and us). Then, all of a sudden, she seems to have no grasp whatsoever on the situation. The flip-flops in her personality suggest that she's either desperate for a new life or out-and-out crazy. Harrow milks the ambiguities for all they're worth, rising and falling from great heights of romanticism to the depths of depression from one scene to the next. When her husband shows Oliver a huge scar running down the length of his chest and claims that Madeleine put it there with some pruning shears, you can't blame Oliver for believing him. That the scar is really the remains of open heart surgery is proof that the husband also has trouble separating fact from fantasy. The movie feels like it should have been a short film, the kind of thing they would use to fill up a gap in the programming on Bravo. It's all very actorly, and Nossiter likes to linger too long on quirky stuff that's supposed to show individualism in the performers, but often looks like individuals performing. The slow transition from a dual character study to some kind of whacked-out Edward Albee trip, in which everyone plays a game while sneeringly trying to get everyone else to reveal their true selves, never really comes together. It's a valiant stab at something different, but it really is just an overlong game of charades. There's some nudity and bad language in "Sunday," and an overall sense of angst that can get a little trying. The initial sex scene between Harrow and Suchet is surprisingly demoralizing. Rated R. 100 minutes. FFWD Weekly When first-time director John Nossiter was handed the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival for his haunting film Sunday, no doubt a few studio execs managed to tear themselves away from their cell phones for a look-see. When he was then handed the Grand Jury Prize - the festival's top honor - the Hollywood suits must've then barked, heeled and shook a paw. Made on the usual minuscule indie budget (one line in the closing credits reads, "Continuity: very little"), Sunday shows just how great independent films can be, warts and all. David Suchet (Hercule Poirot, to the A&E set) plays a former IBM middle-manager turned homeless man, who has a chance encounter with Madeleine (British TV mainstay Lisa Harrow), an aging, lonely actress. Madeleine mistakes Oliver for a famous movie director she once knew, and Oliver - bored, lonely, lost, horny (aren't we all?) - plays along. But almost immediately, Sunday becomes more than just a simple mistaken identity movie. They're both so bored, lonely, lost and horny (aren't we all?), they cling to each other. At times, just one of them keeps up both sides of the conversation, continuing the dream, even when it's clear to them both Oliver isn't a famous director. And so they keep talking. And what talk it is. Nossiter and his writing partner, British poet James Lasdun, know the power of words when they're used sparingly. In the film's greatest scene, the two lovers tell each other stories ("I've been told your stories are spellbinding," says Madeleine, "spellbind me"). Oliver erupts for his one and only big speech, then Harrow casts her own spell. Suchet is a fascinating study of a shambling, shambles of a man, but Harrow is simply amazing. Flighty and harmless one minute, a dangerous glint in her eye the next, she exudes a kind of comfortable smoldering eroticism not usually found in actresses the same age as, let's say... Joe Pesci.But now for the warts: the ex-husband and the ending. Nossiter and his fine script seem unsure of what to do with Ben (Larry Pine), Madeleine's estranged husband. He pops up at random during the film's second half, and almost always just gets in the way, figuratively and literally. Had Nossiter made him simply drift in and out of the narrative, the way he so expertly does with the film's other characters (most memorably a homeless man who spends all day trying to open a steamer trunk in a garbage dump, or the fast food employee who zones out in front of the window, lost) then Ben could become more of a symbol, less of a pest. And less of a cheap gimmick to end the picture. But so what. The film belongs to Oliver and Madeleine. The world has left them behind, and for one day - Sunday - they're determined to hold onto each other, swirling in its wake. A Film Review by James Berardinelli At first glance, there's nothing extraordinary about Jonathan Nossiter's debut feature, Sunday. But, several hours after I had seen the movie, I was still thinking about it, and that's the mark of a film with simple, quiet power. When it premiered at Sundance earlier this year, Sunday received some of the best press of any picture (it won both the Waldo Screenwriting Award and the Grand Jury Prize); now, some eight months later, the fledgling distributor Cinepix Film Properties has assured that at least a small nationwide audience will get a chance to see what so many critics found praiseworthy. It's possible to classify Sunday as a "love story", but that would probably be a misnomer. While it's true that the main characters -- Oliver, a downsized worker (played by David Suchet), and Madeleine, an aging actress for whom roles are scarce (Lisa Harrow) -- go through the motions of lovers, their relationship isn't about love. It's about quenching loneliness and finding companionship in a cold, cruel world that has, in its own way, sought to crush both of them. Sex is nothing more than a form of primal release, a way to connect with another human being. These two have no future, but they cling desperately for a few hours to the illusion of what they have achieved. Once, Madeleine was a well-known and respected British actress, but, as the years passed and the marks of age began to etch themselves upon her features, her services became less and less desired. In a moment of self-deprecating revelation, she claims that the only roles she has a shot at these days are those of zombie mutants in low-budget horror films, adding, "I guess I'm too old to play a human." (It's worth noting that Nossiter has bucked this trend of using young, attractive actors by casting two out-of-shape, middle-aged performers -- a choice that's crucial to the film's success.) Her home life is a mess. She is separated from her husband, Ben (Larry Pine), but he keeps showing up at her house on the pretext of spending time with their daughter. Oliver, meanwhile, is just as despondent as Madeleine. Like her, he's trying to uncover the meaning of life, but it's proving elusive. Since losing his job, he has sunk lower and lower on the financial and social scale. Now, he's living in a shelter by night and wandering the streets of Queens by day. Then, on one fateful Sunday, he meets Madeleine after she mistakes him for a prominent London director by the name of Matthew Delacorta. Oliver decides to play along with her, and, although their initial exchange doesn't touch upon anything that could reveal his deception, Madeleine eventually realizes the truth. Instead of challenging Oliver, however, she begins to play an elaborate game of "pretend" with him. For the most part, Sunday is a poignant, powerfully-realized character study of two lonely people. Their quiet conversations mark the film's highlights, and Nossiter pays particular attention to little details (for example, when Madeleine and Oliver first enter her home, she unobtrusively uses her foot to sweep some newspapers out of sight). In addition, he fashions a gray, grim atmosphere (a cold, wintry New York City) that adds weight to the despair experienced by the characters. Suchet, who is best known for his role as the title character in PBS's Poirot, gained 40 pounds for this part, and plays Oliver with great emotional strength. There are times when we can feel (not just see) his despair. Lisa Harrow, the lead in Gillian Armstrong's The Last Days of Chez Nous, is every bit Suchet's match. As wonderfully effective as the quiet scenes are in Sunday, Nossiter takes his share of missteps. The first involves the inclusion of small army of secondary characters -- Madeleine's husband and the group of men who share the shelter with Oliver. Although their purpose -- to strengthen the sense of isolation -- is clear, scenes with these individuals are distracting, taking time away from the interaction between the two leads and interrupting the film's flow. Secondly, there are instances when Nossiter's artsy style (point-of-view camera angles, close-up shots of dead fish, crabs, and lobsters, etc.) approaches pretentiousness. However, the worst these flaws can do is occasionally mute Sunday's power. The best moments of the film shine through, leaving behind unforgettable images and feelings that will not evaporate when the house lights go up. |
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