Movie Review: Sunday's Illness

Sunday's Illness *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Ramón Salazar.

Written by: Ramón Salazar.

Starring: Bárbara Lennie (Chiara), Susi Sánchez (Anabel), Greta Fernández (Greta), Bruna González (Chiara Niña), David Kammenos (Matthieu Joven), Richard Bohringer (Matthieu), Miguel Ángel Solá (Bernabé).

 

Sunday’s Illness is a film about a mother-daughter reunion after 35 years – a film that holds its card close to its chest as it slowly draws you in. It opens at a fancy party, hosted by Anabel (Susi Sanchez), one of those wealthy women of luxury. She addresses the staff before the party gets started, and doesn’t notice one woman – Chiara (Barbara Lennie) right away. When she does, she seems familiar – and catches her interest. The woman turns out to be the daughter who Anabel walked out on 35 years ago when she was only 7. Despite what Anabel thinks, Chiara isn’t after her money – or anything else material. The only thing she wants is for the pair of them to spend 10 days together at the house Chiara grew up in – which is in the remote countryside. Although Chiara doesn’t explain exactly what the pair of them will do there.

 

Sunday’s Illness is at its best in the first part of the movie – once the setup has been established, and these two people who are mother and daughter, and yet complete strangers, are isolated in that house together. Chiara clearly has a plan, but she’s not sharing it with Anabel – who spends her days in confusion. She didn’t know what to expect – but she did think that perhaps her daughter wanted to get to know her – for the pair of them to bond. Or perhaps that Chiara would be angry at her, and spend their time yelling at each other over the part. But more than anything, Chiara ignores her – she goes about her days in silence, and allows Anabel to do the same. Their interactions can be somewhat torturous – Chiara spraying Anabel with a hose for instance – or critical – like when Chiara catches her mother dancing (one of a pair of twin dances sequences, Chiara will get one too, and the difference between those sequences tell you everything you need to know about the differences between mother and daughter.

 

When the film is establishing who these two very different are, it is fascinating and mysterious. This helps the film a great deal, because the storytelling technique it uses isn’t one of my favorites – it basically tells you there is a secret here, but won’t tell you what it is. Writer/director Ramon Salazar, employs a deliberate pace to the proceedings – he takes his time setting these two up, and doesn’t rush them as it observes them in the wilderness, or interacting with others. The goal is to put you in that house with them – in that small town with few people around, and arose your interest in what will happen as the movie progresses.

 

Alas, the ending of the film isn’t as interesting as the setup. One of the downfalls of this type of storytelling is that if you spend 80 minutes setting up a plot twist we all know is coming, you have to deliver when the time comes. In Sunday’s Illness the twist isn’t all that surprising – it’s pretty much the only thing that would make sense given everything we have learned to that point. The ending still works – it still packs a wallop – but it also feels slightly more contrived than it could have been.

 

Sunday’s Illness is a Netflix original – and it’s the type of film you hope that they make more of. But they do need to get the word out about films like this a little more – it quietly debuted on the site a few weeks ago, and it has yet to really catch on. It deserves to – despite my reservations on the film, it is a well-made and extremely well-acted film that deserves a wider audience.