Wonderfully offbeat film!

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

How sad is this?

Don't Believe the Hype

I watched this movie only because David Suchet was in it. I have followed his career for the past 7 years or so. It is frustrating to find anything beyond the 'Poirot' series with his name in the credits. I am not here to analyze the story but David Suchet's contribution to the overall success of the film.According to his website, Sir Laurence Olivier was Sir John Gielgud's mentor in acting. Sir John Gielgud was David Suchet's mentor. That means that from a thespian genealogy, there is a relationship between Olivier and Suchet. In this film, I realized why Suchet's talent for years has mesmerized me. His performance reminded me of Laurence Olivier in his powerful quietness. He evoked such angst and emotion without any outburst, tears or flailing of arms. He said volumes silently through quiet eyes. I simply felt like I was watching Olivier performing in Suchet's skin. I have seen this briefly in other films but never so unleashed as in 'Sunday'. This was the right script and the right director for David Suchet's talents. It was not a perfect script. It may not be the best film but it was a good script and a talented director. I know because I got to see a brilliant actor shine.I found the movie a bit difficult to follow but attributed that to artistic style. Every author and director has their inclination and desire to make their own voice heard. I can accept that and suspend my own sense of disbelief, at least for a couple of hours. After all, it was for the performance of the lead actor I had settled in.

I loved the beginning--the way you can't quite tell what the setting is, or who the main character is...the story is out of focus the way the world is to Oliver when he takes his glasses off.At the beginning, it stated somewhere that this film was based on a story called "Ate, Memos: the Miracle". All while watching it, I kept trying to figure out what the memos were. A lot of the film was in blue and orange. I wonder what those colors meant to the producer?When they were telling each other those stories, Oliver's was true but Madeleine didn't know it (although at first I thought she did)--and Madeleine made hers up, but Oliver thought she was telling the truth (and so did I!).That husband of hers was really scary. What was he trying to do? I didn't quite catch the story about the ex-husband and the couple in the shower, but it probably was supposed to connect with the scene where the plant was in the shower.That scene on the street when they run into the other men from the shelter was really weird--very spooky and unreal the way Oliver was suspended between them and Madeleine. Must have seemed that way to him, too. Lots of blue and orange there, too. When Oliver paid for their meals at the diner, I knew their relationship was doomed. How could he afford to keep up the pretense?What was the significance of those plants behind plastic in the bedroom? Did they represent Oliver? He was half dead (spiritually, anyhow), Madeleine brings him home and revives him, but doesn't really see him. It's like she's looking at him through not very clear plastic.Madeleine looked like Manet's Olympia, the way she was posed on the bed at the end.....I wish I knew what happened between Oliver's gazing at her there and ending up back on the street. Did she see that fax and realize that he was an imposter? Or did she know already and not care? Could he have told her the truth before he left? Was she using him, thinking of course that he was a producer? It didn't seem like a love story to me, just a couple of unhappy people who got caught in a time warp together.The saddest part was watching Oliver warming his hands on her radiator, knowing that he was going to be on the street all night in the cold, because it was past curfew. I wonder if that one day of being considered a "real" (read: not homeless) person was worth losing his place at the shelter. I expect Madaleine probably went back to England and Oliver managed to pull himself together, find some sort of a life.....but changed, of course!I really want to see it again and try to figure some of this out.

The film's gritty outer-borough images of Queens, familiar to any born and bred New Yorker, got my attention instantly. But it was the film's two principal characters--both middle-aged, both survivors of difficult lives--that sustained it. He, an out-of-work middle management type, is a victim of corporate downsizing now living in a homeless shelter among a multiethnic, multiracial horde of down-and-outers, where he struggles to maintain bare-minimum standards of privacy and personal hygiene--and where remnants of his middle-class life set him apart from his surroundings. She, a faded beauty and still-struggling actress, maintains an oddly genteel life in a rundown two-family house nearby, surrounded by weedy lots and shuttered factories. As they meet and proceed to remove their masks, a kind of love story--brief, impossible, and ultimately doomed, is ignited. This is a beautifully shot and acted film, and a deeply affecting one.

I went to see this movie because I know the producer Amy Hobby. I was very pleasantly surprised at what a nice film it is- a look at two lonely people who meet for a day and are a little better for knowing one another. The sound was muddled on the print I saw- but the overall effect was a nice film for an afternoon- honest filmmaking with people who look real, not the pretty boys of Hollywood... if you see it at the video store rent it for a pleasant experience.