10 · 31 · 21

Death Reminds Us That Everything is Temporary and A Game You Have to Know How to Play: Michel Franco

Gustavo R. Gallardo

Sundown (2021), by the Mexican director Michel Franco, had a special function at the 19th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), with the virtual presence of the director from Tel Aviv, Israel.

The filmmaker thanked the founder and director of FICM, Daniela Michel, for making one more edition of the festival possible, and apologized for not having been at the screening with the audience for what was the first presentation of the film in Mexico.

Sundown, starring Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Iazua Larios, is spoken mostly in English, about which the director said that the language of the film's title wasn't defined until the very end.

"When I watch a movie or read a book I just like to take the time, when the author doesn't explain everything from the start. I like the mystery and that dialogue with the film, and I do the same when I write, it's only at the end that we understand everything," he revealed.

Franco said that he wrote the story during a personal crisis and that it was essential that it happen in Acapulco, "if not, I would not have written or filmed it."

"I have read that there have been violent episodes in Acapulco and it has always caught my attention that people don't stop going," he said, referring to a scene in which the characters go out to eat after a crime was committed at the beach, which actually happened a few years ago, "and just like in the movie, people just kept passing by, enjoying the day at the beach."

"Mexicans have a very particular relationship with violence, which I find interesting when viewed from a foreign character (...) Acapulco is a character in the film; it's a place that has become more complicated from when I was a child to now, it is another reality completely," Franco added.

The director of Después de Lucia (2012) said that in the film, the sun represents life and death and that death is what gives life meaning and what spoils joy, "reminding you that everything is temporary and that it is a game that you have to know how to play."

Sundown tells the story of Neil Bennet, a wealthy British man travels to Acapulco on vacation with his family. While there, he's informed of the death of his mother, but instead of going back to his country, he pretends that he lost his passport and stays in Mexico.

"It seems to me that the cinema reaches greater depth when the resources are fewer and are used in a better way and the depth comes from the cinematographic and not from a speech that the director gives or from intellectual reflections," he said.