Tim Roth (Dulwich, London, 61 years old) tells via videoconference that one of the most complicated and difficult things for an actor is to “do nothing” and eliminate what the public perceives as an interpretation. «No matter how comfortable one is in front of the camera, it is a presence that is always there, it is the fourth wall, and one of the most complicated things is to break it, get rid of it, and make, for example, the viewer feel with me on the beach in Acapulco.
This is fundamentally what the British achieves in ‘Sundown’, the latest film by Mexican director Michel Franco, which hits cinemas this Friday. Nothing is as it seems in this film that captures the vacation, at full speed, of a British couple with their children, in one of the resorts in the paradisiacal Acapulco. Days of drinking and recreation are suddenly interrupted when a loved one dies and the family decides to return to London. Not all of them, because Neil, played by Roth, claims to have left his passport at the hotel and says that he will take the next flight.
What follows is the story of an apparently empty person, without soul or any expressiveness and oblivious to everything that is happening around him, who decides to drink his days at one of the beach bars. Original and intriguing, the film plays tricks on the viewer, who never stops asking questions and conjectures while he watches, astonished, at each of the character’s uncomfortable decisions.
Video. The trailer for ‘Sundown’.
Did the same thing happen to Roth while reading the script? “With Michel it never happens that way,” explains the actor, who had already worked on ‘Chronic’ with the Mexican director and on ‘600 Miles’, of which Franco is producer. “Michel is never going to give you a script so you can read it and decide whether or not to make the movie,” he continues. “Normally, the starting point is a phone call in which he tells you that he wants to make a movie about a certain topic,” Roth says. A creative exchange then begins, with abundant conversations, where all kinds of ideas arise, until one day Franco breaks away from everything and writes the first draft of the script. «That first version, we destroy it again and start again with more exchanges, but it doesn’t stop there. Also while filming we are constantly changing things until filming is finished. Michel’s is a really very creative and unique process,” says the actor.
Getting rid of movies
Interestingly, Roth has not yet seen the film. “I will do that. There is something very special about the way it shoots that fascinates me, so I will see it for sure, but I want to see it the right way, which is in a cinema, with a group of strangers in a dark room, not at a festival. “I’m sure I’ll end up very surprised.”
The truth is that the performer is not very fond of seeing himself on the big screen. “I stopped watching the movies I’m in some time ago,” he says. «Sometimes you do things that you think are going to be wonderful and when the movie comes out, you discover that it is the disappointment of your life. Other times, you do something you think is going to be horrible, and the result is wonderful. So you never know what’s going to happen,” he reflects. As time went by, Roth decided that once he finished his work on a production, the film became part of the audience. «No matter how much it appears on the screen, whether in film or television, it is no longer part of me. I learned to get rid of them and for me, in some way, it is like moving forward », he analyzes. “Before I used to take what they said about me as something very personal and it affected me a lot, whether it was good or bad, so I made the decision to stop doing it, I think it’s much healthier to stay away from the movie,” says the person who claims not to already read reviews about his work, “neither good nor bad,” he adds. He won’t read this text either, he says with a laugh. «In fact, when I give interviews, I am more interested in what the journalists have to say about the film than me, who has not seen it. Furthermore, the interviews are more interesting this way because we can have a much more enjoyable conversation,” he concludes with amusement.
Video. A trailer for the film.
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