Oliver (David Suchet) is a laid-off IBM technician, and he is homeless. Every day is Sunday for such a man; he has no job to go to. On one particular Sunday, he meets Madeleine (Lisa Harrow), a little-known actress separated from her husband. After Madeleine mistakes Oliver for a movie director, the two talk and then engage in sex, which—count on it—will never happen again. They realize that what has developed is a charade.
Jonathan Rossiter‘s characters in Sunday (1997) are bereft. The film is nonchalantly concerned to show us what would be rightly considered beside the point, as the copulation in the hallway between Madeleine and Oliver turns out to be. Likewise with the activities of the men from the homeless shelter (again: bereft) where Oliver is staying. Like Oliver, they’re inescapably wasting their time.
A poetic American indie, Sunday is sad but, because it’s also amusing, not quite a heartbreaker. There is more acumen than pathos. Rossiter provides some masterly direction, and Suchet and Harrow are distinguished. ‘Tain’t for children, though. Lisa Harrow gets stripped to an extent she never did in The Last Days of Chez Nous (the only other movie I’ve seen her in).
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