There are so many penises in the opening act of Rotting in the Sun that you might think you’ve wandered into the wrong kind of theatre or happened upon a porn channel. It’s an unconventional choice for what turns out to be an unconventional movie, but if you turn away before the big twist at the midway point, you’d be missing what turns out to be a flawed but surprising thriller full of tension and revelation. You just have to wade through a lot of dicks to get there.
Directed by Sebastián Silva from a script he wrote with Pedro Peirano, Rotting in the Sun takes a cinéma vérité approach to the dreary but privileged life of an artist who also happens to be named “Sebastián Silva,” played by the writer/director himself. He trudges around the plaza in front of his apartment in Mexico City, googling methods of suicide. Back inside his ramshackle studio, his maid, Vero (Catalina Saavedra), flutters about in consternation over apparently mussing up some of his unfinished paintings. He mostly ignores her as he pores over a gloomy paperback (E.M. Cioran’s The Trouble with Being Born). Despite the comfortable trappings of his world, he’s presented as a person with negative charisma, and this is the seed of the flaw that undermines subsequent events. Why should the viewer care about what happens to such a glum loser?
On the advice of his landlord, Sebastián takes a trip to a beach resort where throngs of gay men frolic in various states of nakedness and arousal. The camera loves it, lunging for close-ups of lubed-up body parts and unsimulated sex acts. None of it, however, arouses Sebastián, who mopes with his paperback even after a meet-cute with Jordan (Jordan Firstman), an overbearing social media influencer from the U.S. who latches onto Sebastián with a swiftly concocted scheme for collaboration. Like Silva, Firstman is a real-life person playing a version of himself. His naughty puppy-dog persona seems calculated for maximum appeal in 5-second Instagram stories, but his shallowness and abrasiveness quickly grate on both Sebastián and the viewer. Jordan’s idea for a Larry David-like project centered on the two characters suggests a mirror gallery of self-referentiality that’s intriguing but doomed. Silva’s character just isn’t interesting or developed enough to merit the humor and pathos that might potentially result from such an endeavor. This is a flaw that both the imagined project and the film itself share.
Fortunately, the movie isn’t headed in that direction. Just when it seems the plot is moving towards bringing Sebastián and Jordan together, an unexpected complication blows all of that up. Jordan arrives at Sebastián’s apartment only to find him missing, and the one person who knows what happened to him is Vero, the maid. Previously framed as a peripheral character, Vero is thrust into the role of protagonist as the viewer shares her knowledge of the hidden truth. Guileless and riven with guilt, Vero does everything she can to conceal her role in the increasingly bizarre mystery of Sebastián’s disappearance. Here’s where the script tightens the narrative screws, with Saavedra and Firstman delivering taut performances. Jordan pesters her for information and she dissembles with growing agitation. She exudes the vibe of someone shrieking with panic on the inside while displaying an eerily flat outward affect. It makes for a compelling sparring match with Jordan’s wily charm and intelligence. Meanwhile, his suspicions deepen and he edges towards taking action to get at the truth. One of the revelations of the film is that he’s nowhere near as shallow as he seemed to be.
The script makes ingenious use of the language barrier between Jordan (who barely speaks Spanish) and Vero (who scarcely utters a word in English). Using a phone app to translate their fraught interactions, Jordan’s interrogations and Vero’s evasions are rendered in flat computer-speech that strips away the tell-tale hesitations and hedges that the viewer hears in the actors’ deliveries. This reaches its peak in a devastating final scene when the film circles back to its starting point with a revelation that both lays bare the truth and allows its impact to sail right over Jordan’s head. It’s a remarkable place to end up for a movie that started out like a boys-gone-wild skin flick before veering into something Hitchcock-adjacent. Despite the intentionally off-putting protagonists and a gratuitous parade of penises, Rotting in the Sun transforms into a lean and surprising thriller where every stray element–even the title–contributes to the slow unveiling of a hideous truth.
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