There's no zest for the weary in dreary 'Sunday'Joe Baltake
It's a nondescript Sunday morning in Queens, N.Y., "a day of nothingness," as one of the characters puts it in Jonathan Nossiter's bleak, wintry "Sunday." It's a day for killing time until the work week begins again on Monday morning. But for the people in Nossiter's disquieting, cheerless movie, people with nowhere to go and nothing to do, every day is like Sunday. Take Oliver (David Suchet), for example. He's a downsized IBM accountant who has lost his wife, his home and his pride. On this particular morning, like every other morning, Oliver goes through his fastidious routine in the men's shelter where he sleeps - cleaning up the bathroom before he uses it, placing towels over certain areas to protect himself - while carefully avoiding the shelter's other denizens. Then he spends the day wandering around. Oliver is still stunned by the horror that his life has become. He walks around aimlessly in a state of disbelief. At one intersection, he hears a woman shout at him. "You're Matthew Dellacorta! The film director." The woman, who is carrying a half-dead plant, which comes to represent her life, is Madeleine Vesey (Lisa Harrow), a displaced British actress who transplanted herself to America where she married and, with her husband (Larry Pine), adopted a little Asian American girl. She also promptly lost her career, but not before she was relegated to appearing in horror movies. Oliver can't get a word in. Madeleine rushes him into one of Queens' funky diners where she buys him a meal and chatters on about how she almost worked with him and how much she admired his film, "Diversions." Oliver doesn't bother to correct Madeleine. It isn't every day that he gets a free meal, see, or the attention of an attractive woman. They go back to Madeleine's place and make love. They also tell each other stories about themselves which shrewdly keep the audience off-balance. Madeleine, who assumes the famous Matthew Dellacorta is in Queens scouting locations for his next movie, asks him what it's about. Oliver tells her that it's about ... a downsized IBM accountant who has lost his wife, his home and his pride and who goes through fastidious routines in the men's shelter where he sleeps before spending the day wandering around. The character is still stunned by the horror that his life has become. He walks around aimlessly in a state of disbelief until he meets this woman ... an actress. He turns the truth of his life into fiction, replete with Madeleine as a crucial part of it. It's a story we watch as he is telling it. And Madeleine thinks it's wonderful. Nossiter continues to suggest the idea of multiple realities when Madeleine tells her history: She feels lost in her new home, estranged from her husband, and to relieve the tedium, she likes to pick up strange men - and pretend that they're famous directors. At this point, you have to wonder if she's lying. Exactly what is the truth here? And could it be that Oliver really is Matthew Dellacorta, scouting movie locations in Queens? Perhaps Madeleine didn't make a mistake. Perhaps he is Dellacorta. The potential for deception, for emotional games, becomes increasingly apparent when Madeleine's husband, Ben, shows up and makes a case for Madeleine's mental instability. "Sunday," which won multiple awards at the last Sundance Film Festival, including best picture, is an arresting film, at once lyrical and gritty, that benefits from the sense of experience brought to it by its two stars. It isn't every day that we get a love story about middle-aged people, or one with sex scenes in which the bodies look used, not tightly muscular, smoothly pumped up and, well, unreal. But for all its worthy achievements, "Sunday" feels half-dead. Like that plant. The joylessness that permeates it never lets up. There's no surcease, no relief. The drama here, which could either be fantasy or reality, remains downbeat to the end.
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