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"The calm night / in pair of the rises of the dawn"

. It is not documented to what extent Michel Franco admires the passion for the oxymoron of Saint John of the Cross. But there is something. The Mexican director says that the first thing that strikes an accidental visitor to Acapulco, where he sets his latest film, is the mercy of the sun, "which hits everything."

And it is precisely that clarity that burns the stage and one would say the protagonist of '

Sundown

'.

It is, to place us, a completely black glow, opaque and brutal in its blinding luminosity. Everything in this little prodigy is nothing more than pure and something more than just a brilliant oxymoron worthy of a pagan and very lewd ceremony of sanctity.

In just 83 minutes, the story of a man lost in one of the largest

vacation

'

resorts

' in the world

is told

. A family goes there with Charlotte Gainsbourg at the head and something more than just rich to spend a few days in accordance with their privileged status. Suddenly, the death of a relative in England forces to suspend the rest on what seems an already very rested life. The protagonist pretends to have lost his passport and stays in Mexico. Only.

What follows is the detailed description of the journey of this man interpreted with effortless laziness (another oxymoron) by Tim Roth

around an intimate void that is, in effect, everyone's.

If last year Michel Franco surprised us right here in Venice with '

New Order',

a film for amazement, dissension and revolt, now he is back to his old ways with the closest thing to a walk through all the precipices that lie in wait for us.

The film navigates with a pulse that captivates

a transparent daily life that, however, does not reveal anything but darkness.

Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg, in Venice.YARA NARDIREUTERS

As is the norm in the filmography of the director of

'After Lucia'

or '

Chronic

', the entire film takes place outside the field. We see Roth strolling along the beach, drinking beer with relish, and even falling in love in broad daylight, but the palpitation of the gaze, let's call it that, is only pending an opaque threat near all cataclysms.

The camera simply drifts to the shore of a suddenly bloodstained sea.

Everything runs in a calm that works as a premonition of the worst of everything.

If you like, the obvious conflict is there, in the armored holiday resorts that don't let a trace of poverty slip through the security cameras;

in the absurdity of a millionaire man who prefers to abandon himself to a laziness close to a misery

as stubborn as it is suffocating; in the apparent tranquility of a society that dances, sings love songs and settles its blood bills in front of countless always silent witnesses.

But once again, Michel Franco aspires to more.

In his cinema, the description of the most terrible monsters (from bullying to euthanasia through the most violent accidents of inequality) wants to be in addition to denouncing the punctual account of the most obvious social disability, the impossibility of communication, the end without more.

And that concerns each and every one of us.

It is a cinema for the admonition, the perplexity and the uncomfortable.

It is a cinema that screams in silence.

It is a cinema so close to the oxymoron that Saint John of the Cross would undoubtedly give it his blessing.

Or curse.

What difference does it make.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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