SUNDAY

From a Christian perspective, the vast majority of American motion pictures produced during the past decade deal with one thing: the emptiness, loneliness, futility, hopelessness, and fleeting nature of life without Jesus Christ. The excellent, uplifting and award-winning TENDER MERCIES deals explicitly with this theme, as do the powerful, Oscar-winning films DEAD MAN WALKING and SLING BLADE to a lesser extent. Unfortunately, most American filmmakers give Jesus Christ no quarter. His redemptive work on the Cross is either ignored or plainly denied in such depressing existential movies as LEAVING LAS VEGAS.

Independent filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter mines similar territory in his award-winning feature film debut. SUNDAY, an anti-romance which chronicles one day in the lives of two middle-aged people weighed down by the christless misery of their existence won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. At times brilliantly executed with honest and risky performances by David Suchet and Lisa Harrow, SUNDAY is ultimately a cold, cheerless film set in a world of quiet desperation − a world where truth is relative and the Church is powerless to deal with social and personal ills.

SUNDAY opens with a documentary-style scene of a typical Sunday morning at a church-run shelter for homeless men in the dilapidated New York City borough of Queens. As the residents squabble over community property, watch television and tell jokes, the movie narrows its focus to Oliver (David Suchet), a nondescript, isolated man who is preparing to go out for the day. On the street, Oliver is hailed by an off-kilter woman toting a huge palm plant, who thinks she recognizes him as famous film director, Matthew Delacorta, whom she met once in London. A case of mistaken identity.

Befuddled, but pleased by the attention, Oliver does not correct her mistake, but plays along. The woman, struggling British actress Madeleine (Lisa Harrow), invites him to breakfast at a local diner, where she prattles on about her floundering career and recalls a cryptic bit of wisdom Delacorta once shared with her: “doubt is the protoplasm of all real art.” Eventually, they go back to Madeleine’s apartment, where they end up fornicating. Shortly thereafter, Oliver meets Madeleine’s estranged husband, Ben (Larry Pine), who immediately suspects that Oliver/Matthew is not the director Madeleine believes him to be.

It slowly emerges that Oliver is, in fact, a former IBM executive who was downsized out of his job, losing his wife and home in the process. Even after Oliver has attempted to reveal his identity, Madeleine chooses to believe that the “director” is posing as a homeless man who is researching his new film, and Oliver bumblingly goes along with the charade.

Writer/Director Nossiter, who previously helmed the well-received documentary RESIDENT ALIENS, shows a deft touch with character and milieu while exploring the intricate relationship between desire and identity-and the blurred line between reality and fantasy. With a fascinating exchange of personal stories between the leads in which truth takes on the power of fiction, Nossiter leaves it up to his audience whether Madeleine and Oliver are together doing something healthy, sinful or simply dangerous.

Suchet, who plays Hercule Poirot on PBS’s “Mystery!” series, reportedly gained 47 pounds to play Oliver and may be unrecognizable to fans of the series. With an aching desperation and only a tenuous grip on reality, Suchet’s “director” savors this brittle little fantasy as if it were a life support system. Likewise, Harrow’s Madeleine lives this Sunday as if it were her last day on earth. Driven by these realistic, heart-breaking performances, SUNDAY suggests that only in each other can these two lonely, passionate people find a glimmer of hope, and perhaps redemption.

In the joyless world of SUNDAY, everyone is spiritually homeless, adrift in a world of doubt and skepticism, each one waiting for some momentous event to change everything for the better. Viewers who have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Savior know that modern life is indeed a sad state of affairs for those who struggle to get by without the redemptive work of Jesus Christ in their lives. Pray for Director Jonathan Nossiter and for the viewers of his well-made but hopeless film that they will come to hear and to receive the joyful, renewing message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.