Gateway Cinephiles

Sin Nombre
2009 (USA / Mexico)
Director: Cary Fukunaga
Viewed: April 19, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print

Here is a simple story, familiar almost to the point of triteness.  A Good Woman searching for a better life in a faraway land and a Bad Man haunted by his past meet by happenstance on the road.  They bond, after a fashion, and gradually the fates of these two travelers become entwined.  In Sin Nombre, the stark directorial debut from Cary Fukunaga, the Good Woman is a young Honduran named Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), heading across Latin America with her father and uncle to an uncertain, undocumented life in New Jersey.  The Bad Man is a Mexican gangster known as Willy (Edgar Flores), who is fleeing the wrath of his gang after having committed the gravest of sins.  The road they share is a freight train heading north, towards Estados Unidos.  In most reviews, this would be the point where I suggest that the particulars don’t really matter, that Sin Nombre plumbs thematic territory that transcends its setting.  Yet I can’t, in good conscience, make that claim.  The Timeless Story that Fukunaga is striving for is modestly successful, hindered by occasional clumsiness and all-too-frequent contrivances.  Sin Nombre’s principal appeal is firmly grounded in its specifics.  The details of his setting—both sulfurous and sweet—lend the film a mythic richness that the creaky story and weakly drawn characters fail to convey.

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Sunshine Cleaning
2009 (USA)
Director: Christine Jeffs
Viewed: April 11, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print

Christine Jeffs’ Sunshine Cleaning lounges comfortably within the plush confines of the indie dramedy framework, but it mostly resists the roteness and simple-minded platitudes that usually bedevil the genre.  It’s apparent from the first scene that we are not traipsing through feel-good territory: an anonymous man walks into an Albuquerque sporting goods store and proceeds to blow his head off with a shotgun.  However, another early scene more gracefully signals Sunshine’s modestly sophisticated approach to the well-traveled premise, “Spunky Protagonist Discovers Her True Purpose.” House-cleaner and single mom Rose (Amy Adams) stands in her bathroom, still dripping from a shower, and reads aloud from a note taped to the mirror: “You are powerful.  You can do anything.”  It’s an intriguing gesture that reveals a woman both more vulnerable and self-aware than one might expect of a film like Sunshine.  (There is even a gentle echo when a character later discovers a poignant reminder note posted on a door.) And so it goes: Jeffs begins with a story that seems dully familiar, but adds sufficient half-twists to fashion something far more satisfying than might have otherwise emerged.  Often these are omissions that intrigue by their absence and add dollops of authenticity to the film’s quirky form.  Jeffs shaves off bits and pieces here, skips over the unnecessary there, and generally keeps the viewer on their toes while also ensuring they leave their seat pleased as punch.

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