Sunlight Review – Monkey-Suited Woman Goes on Road Trip in the Director’s Highly Unusual First Film
Possibly the most sensual instances in film recently features a lady partially clad as a simian. By this point in comedian Nina Conti’s directorial debut, a heady buildup of attraction occupies a RV between depressed radio host Roy, played by Shenoah Allen, and the simian, played by Nina Conti, who saved him from a suicide attempt in a New Mexico hotel room.
The character is reasonably intrigued to learn who’s beneath the outfit and the role that is part of it – a vulgar braggart who opines on all things around them in the prim British tones of Anne Robinson.
The Simian’s Backstory
This character reveals some details about her inner human: she used to be Jane, who served as a nightclub mascot for her manipulative stepfather Wade, played by Bill Wise, and came to identify excessively with her outfit. Subsequent to her mother’s passing due to cancer, she then recklessly shacked up with Wade.
Choosing to escape his grasp, she demands Roy escort her to a Colorado lake where she aims to start a banana pontoon business. He possesses his own confrontation scheduled: going to the graveyard and exhuming his detested father to retrieve a luxury watch with which he will finance her lakeside dreams.
Pursuit and Comedy
While Wade pursues them on his racing bike, which is the spur for this repeatedly uproarious escapade, the monkey gets the funniest remarks: “Your dad’s not going to dig himself up.” Yet it’s rapidly clear that this mock road trip is driven by genuine pain – especially when Roy begins to move in closer.
“Jane’s leaving it up to me now. She died last night – just like you,” warns the monkey, who is a kind of reverse ventriloquist’s puppet; accountable, rather than a intense id.
Similar to Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank, Conti and co-writer Allen are presenting fundamentally important points about self and other selves compartmentalising trauma.
Camerawork and Denouement
Her filming style sometimes feels a bit unsure – maybe appropriately for a story about someone making a improvised life as a monkey. Furthermore the denouement comes a little too easily, not quite entangling us in the complications of Jane’s simian transition as much as it might.
Yet these are small complaints when Conti accomplishes the accomplishment of being amusing, emotionally astute and rather sexy throughout.
