Sunday

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.

One of the most unique films I've seen in years. An indie film with a meticulously well thought-out story, full of clever twists and surprises; not a comedy but an offbeat drama with some amusing moments. Excellently conceived and directed, with Lisa Harrow as the standout (great body, too). The only minus is the amateurish overacting provided by Richard Harris's little boy, Jarred. I have no idea how this talentless, nepotist, unsympathetic nerd manages to get his face into so many interesting movies.

Unfortunately, indie films have already had their heyday in the 90s, and are by now (2006) as good as dead. Today, nearly every indie film has to have a PC message, and is made by a talentless moron.

Sunday (1997) is a beautiful film about a lost day in the lives of two lost people. It is also about their attempts to locate themselves and connect to each other. It is complicated, sad, haunted, angry, hopeful, sweet, awkward, mysterious, confusing, gritty, and ultimately quite everyday and ordinary. Something tremendous is happening in this film, and this something is poetry.

A delight in a world where "if you don't know what's going on in the first thirty seconds, you're lost." The first half-hour or so lets a viewer take in another world, one with which she may not be familiar, and allows a gradual "easing into" the plot, which sheds far more light on human behavior than almost any ten glossy, big-budget H-wood films out there. Most won't want to do the work required to fully appreciate this film. Take the time, talk it over, then get Signs and Wonders.

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.