‘Sunset Stories‘, the new comedy from Ernesto Foronda and Silas Howard, poses as a fairy-tale for the modern age: woman faces her flaws and demons, and finds her place in the world. But the film fails to draw the viewer in, partly because of a meandering, toothless plot, but especially because of a deeply unlikeable main character.
Monique Gabriela Curnen stars as May, a children’s cancer ward nurse. The bulk of the film is thinly framed as a “fairy tale” that May tells to two young cancer patients. But outside of the film’s bookends, that conceit is forgotten. May’s fairy tale begins when she is sent to pick up a cooler filled with living tissue and bring it back to her hospital. She winds up running into her old boyfriend, JP (Sung Kang). The relationship, we soon realize, ended badly. May leaves her cooler unattended while she heads into the bathroom, and shockingly it is stolen. Instead of calling the police like any sane person (grand larceny, anyone?), May teams up with a reluctant JP. The two gumshoe it about town, interviewing people and chasing the latest clue, trying to find the cooler before its contents become unusable.
The film fails to make us care. Basic details that could have created suspense are inexplicably withheld. What, specifically, is in the box? (We do not learn that it is bone marrow until the second act). Who, exactly, is waiting for it? What will happen if it is not retrieved in time? Will little Timmy Johnson die? Will May lose her job, or at least a week’s salary? The failure to establish basic, concrete stakes vastly weakens our interest in what comes to feel like an aimless wild goose chase.
But nothing mars the film more than its repellent protagonist. Ms.Curnen portrays May as dour and shrill, with a wounded and downcast expression that rarely lifts. She is cold and rude to witnesses whose help she seeks. When asking help of Stu (Sandy Martin), a tomboyish motorcycle shop owner, May sarcastically questions Stu’s assertion that she has work to do. She is not much kinder, nor more appreciative, to JP, who helps her out despite nursing an utterly justified grudge. (The day after JP proposed to her, May left town without a trace and disappeared for a year, leaving only a note telling JP not to look for her.) Except with cancer patients, May is too frequently devoid of warmth or gratitude. It is impossible to root for her.
“Sunset Stories” fails to present either an engrossing plot or a main character worthy of investing in. The result is no fairy tale.
Read the review at IndieNYC.com
David@IndieNYC.com
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