When the programme for the Edinburgh International Film Festival was revealed in July, few features caught my attention like director Nina Conti’s debut feature ‘Sunlight’. The picture of a person hiding inside a monkey costume in the scorching New Mexico heat that along with the feature’s bizarre description in the programme booklet was all it took for me to get hooked on the premise.
Fans of Conti from her work in stand up will all be aware of the importance the monkey has had throughout her career. So fans will have been buzzing at the news that she’s finally decided that it was time to give in and don the foul-mouthed persona in her feature directorial debut.
The film opens with the attempted suicide of a radio host named Roy, played by co-writer Shenoah Allen, which is botched at the fright of seeing Jane (Conti), peeking through his motel room window in a creepy, straight faced monkey outfit just as he’s about to take his life. Roy then wakes up in his caravan now driven by Jane who is attempting to reach Colorado but agrees to accompany Roy in a race against time to reach his mother before his doomed suicide note reaches gets there first.
Including side quests such as digging up a grave to retrieve a luxurious watch and evading the pursuit of Jane’s father tailing them on his bicycle across the American Southwest, Conti and Allen go far beyond plans A to Z during this disappointing effort at a road trip movie.
It is clear from the relentless use of the F-bomb and outrageous remarks that ‘Sunlight’ is trying to earn the reputation as a sweary modern cult comedy favourite. It’s unfortunately very stale in its approach to comedy.
There is some chemistry between Conti’s masked monkey and Roy but only in the sense that they can shout all sorts of insults at one another without much thought. It’s so aimless that its difficult to figure out whether any of these arguments were actually scripted at all and the plot is bloated with too many detached storylines.
The humour from Conti’s puppet stand-up, while it does have its moments on film, does not translate well to the screen at all in ‘Sunlight’ as a sloppy storyline and recycled jokes fall flat on its face in producing a farce and forgettable plot. Not even the interesting soundtrack choices of Aphex Twin and Radiohead, can recover any of the sense of a major letdown.
