“Sunlight”: Edinburgh review | Reviews

The picture is clever, but not particularly profound

sunlight premiered in Edinburgh, which is fitting as Conti has previously performed at the city’s Fringe Festival. The film seems to have a festival future thanks to its peculiar mix of laughs and pathos and the master of the mockumentary, Christopher Guest (who cast Conti in his 2006 comedy Please note) has signed on as executive producer. While the box office outlook isn’t quite as rosy, those who like their love stories quirky and vulnerable will find a lot to appreciate here.

Roy (Allen) works at a local radio station in New Mexico, but sunlight begins, he has decided to hang himself in a nondescript motel room. Just as he is about to take his own life, he is saved by Monkey (Conti), a costumed person who speaks with a British accent. When Roy regains consciousness, he realizes that he is sitting in the passenger seat of his van, with Monkey at the wheel. He drives them to Colorado, where Monkey has a business meeting. Pursued by Wade (Bill Wise), the operator of the motel where the woman in the monkey costume worked – her real name is Jane – Roy and Monkey get to know each other, although Monkey treats Jane as if she were a completely separate person.

Essentially a life-sized version of Conti’s monkey character from her ventriloquist act, Monkey is consistently funny as Roy tries to start a conversation with this unruly, vulgar creature. Occasionally, Monkey unzips the front of the costume so the “human” inside can go to the bathroom or eat something, but Monkey never removes the head and repeatedly denigrates Jane, insisting that “she” is emotionally disturbed while “he” is perfectly healthy. Roy may have thought himself mentally ill, but he has found a traveling companion who may be even worse off.

Working with a script that seems to leave room for improvisation, Conti creates a nice comic tension by sticking strictly to Monkey’s strange reality. Roy quickly accepts Monkey’s terms of engagement, speaks only to Monkey, and acts like the woman whose hands or stomach he occasionally sees is something of an alien object. But as they spend time together on the street, a romantic spark develops, raising an intriguing question: is Roy falling in love with Monkey or Jane? sunlight takes this dilemma to a surprising extreme and leads to a strange/funny sex scene that understandably leaves Roy a little disturbed and confused.

Allen, who collaborated on the screenplay with Conti, essentially plays the serious man opposite Monkey, and delivers a sensitive portrayal of a man wrestling with unresolved issues regarding his deceased father. (A major subplot involves Roy and Monkey making a detour to the father’s grave so Roy can dig up his old man’s priceless watch.) Those familiar with Conti’s Monkey puppet will enjoy how it embodies the character even more literally thanks to the full-size costume, and when Jane finally “shows up” near Monkey, sunlightThe ending culminates in a disarmingly moving moment.

Unfortunately, while the film is clever, it is not particularly deep. These two lonely, disturbed individuals evoke our sympathy, but the disjointed, episodic narrative – further weakened by some overly broad supporting characters – is a chaotic mix of some beautiful sequences and several forgettable scenes. sunlight argues that no matter how bleak life seems and how unlovable we find ourselves, there might still be someone out there who really sees us. That delicate notion is at the heart of this strange, fickle romance, and much like Jane, it struggles to emerge from beneath all the artificiality.