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Jonathan Nossiter’s “Sunday” – winner of the Grand Jury Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival – is an intriguingly ambiguous drama about the chance meeting and role-playing of two lonely, middle-aged people in Queens, N.Y. Despite a slow, disorienting start and an unsatisfying conclusion, pic has memorable impact due largely to strong lead performances by David Suchet and Lisa Harrow. Even so, it will need canny marketing, backed with highly favorable critical response, to attract ticketbuyers in specialty venues.

Suchet, best known as sleuth Hercule Poirot in British-produced mysteries aired on PBS, plays a considerably less flamboyant character here. He’s first glimpsed as a glum, bespectacled fellow who’s accosted by an attractive woman of roughly his own age while wandering along a Queens street on a wintry Sunday morning. Madeleine (Harrow), a transplanted British actress, greets him as Matthew Delacorta, a noted film director whom she met briefly several years earlier. She invites him to lunch and, later, to her townhouse.

At first, the man, obviously flattered by the attention, struggles to behave as though he really is Delacorta. But when asked by Madeleine to demonstrate his skills as a storyteller in her parlor, he reveals his true identity in a dark, downbeat narrative: He’s really Oliver, a former IBM tax accountant who was downsized out of his job. He subsequently lost his home, his wife and his pride.

Oliver currently resides at the homeless shelter shown during the pic’s opening scenes. To pass the long hours during the many days when he has nothing to do, he walks aimlessly through Queens. He was in the middle of such a jaunt when Madeleine first saw him.

Madeleine’s initial response is one of wounded pride and barely repressed fury. She bitterly tells her own story, about a transplanted British actress who has had to scrape for work after moving to the United States. To relieve her boredom, she claims, she occasionally picks up a strange man on the street and lures him back to her apartment by pretending to mistake him for a famous director.

Is she lying? Neither Oliver nor the audience is certain. Things get even cloudier after their brief, mostly off-camera coupling. While Madeleine takes a post-coital shower, Oliver is unnerved by the arrival of her estranged husband, Ben (Larry Pine), and Madeleine’s young adopted daughter, Suky (Yeong Joo Kim). Ben is far too aggressively friendly for Oliver’s comfort, and tries too hard to make light of Madeleine’s angry response to his unannounced appearance. When he’s alone with Oliver, however, Ben warns him about Madeleine’s mental instability. During an argument, Ben claims, she once attacked him with garden shears. And he has a scar on his chest to prove it.

Throughout the remainder of “Sunday,” Nossiter skillfully interlaces suspense with his character-driven drama about two lost souls who yearn to connect. Oliver bolts from Madeleine’s townhouse, but is forced to return to retrieve his coat. Much to his surprise – and his profound uneasiness – Madeleine continues to behave, or pretends to behave, as though he really is Matthew Delacorta. Even as Oliver describes the desperate shabbiness of his life, Madeleine acts as though she’s hearing a great director talk about the plot of his next movie.

Despite the frequent appearances of supporting players, including a boisterous Jared Harris as another resident of the homeless shelter, “Sunday” basically is a two-hander. Suchet is affectingly persuasive as a man demoralized by economic circumstance and furious self-loathing. It is extremely easy to accept the idea that someone so desperate for the balm of human contact would willingly take part in a bizarre charade, if only to have a sympathetic companion for a few hours.

Harrow is every bit as convincing in the even trickier role of Madeleine. With artful subtlety, she keeps the audience off-balance with hints of her own toxic self-loathing, suggesting that Madeleine may indeed be capable of psychotic violence. Yet there also is something tragically vulnerable about the character – just enough to keep Oliver, and the audience, mesmerized.

Continuity is not the strong suit of “Sunday.” Judging by the light visible during exterior scenes, the sun appears to rise and fall at least twice during the course of a single day. In one scene, a heavy snowfall seems to be in progress. A few moments later, however, the weather miraculously improves.

Fortunately, the lead performances are compelling enough to keep these and other inconsistencies from being anything more than minor distractions.

For the most part, director and co-writer (with James Lasdun) Nossiter sustains an effective balance of dread and melancholy as his story methodically unfolds. The mood is enhanced by the fluid cinematography of Michael Barrow and John Foster, and the evocative production design of Deana Sidney.

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1.48GB | 1h 30m | 718×480 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/4CFF2BD5EFDA12C/Jonathan_Nossiter_-_(1997)_Sunday.mkv

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The post Jonathan Nossiter – Sunday (1997) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Minimal in budget as well as in style, form, and content – the entire production is said to have cost a mere $10,000 – this black-and-white 16 millimeter tragicomedy was shot by two UCLA film students chiefly on and around their own campus. Both filmmakers play themselves in the movie, as do all the other characters; the slender plot is a literal restaging of events that actually happened, with everyone re-creating his or her original role. A single subject – Zahedi’s unrequited love for, or infatuation with, Erin McKim over the space of what appears to be two or three months – is the focus of practically every scene and shot. The film’s minimalism is not merely the result of its limited number of settings, camera angles, characters, and dramatic situations but also of the limited number of emotions and behavioral patterns available to the characters.

The strengths of this concentrated approach are both comic and analytical; the results never stray from the recognizable and lifelike. The film’s multiple repetitions lampoon the monotony of romantic obsession and the monotony of a life-style that simultaneously supports and thwarts such an obsession.

1.00GB | 1 h 24 min | 708×531 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/FA79E2F8C226DDE/A_Little_Stiff_(1991).mkv

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The post Greg Watkins & Caveh Zahedi – A Little Stiff (1991) first appeared on Cinema of the World.