A totally sarcastic movie that is not without its incredibly moving moments. Told in a manner reminiscent of a mockumentary, without actually being one, Rotting in the Sun starts by being about a director with suicidal ideations, a tendency to take ketamine and an encounter that can be both amorous and careerist with Instagram personality Jordan Firstman. But everything takes a turn and a sofa is to blame.
A paradise beach, ketamine and poppers galore, sex to boot… and yet Sebastián Silva is bored to death. Played by the director himself, in a metafictional version, the protagonist of this film is a potentially suicidal young filmmaker, fed on an explosive diet of unbridled ambition, viral videos and Emil Cioran quotes. Together with his housekeeper and a social media celebrity, Sebastián will experience a series of deceptions and misunderstandings, in a film that gets progressively more anxious. Self-aware and highly critical of a certain artistic class that is too cynical and self-absorbed for its own good, Rotting in the Sun is a subversive queer acid comedy that recovers the adventurous energy of the Chilean director’s early films, such as the hallucinatory Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus. (Bruno Pereira)
