Who foresaw the incredible journey that Nina Conti and her sidekick Monkey would embark on when she first emerged as a ventriloquist act on the stand-up circuit, winding up here with a delightful indie film executive produced by Christopher Guest?
Of course, Monkey has always been more than a puppet for the comic. Increasingly, he's been an expression of the most troubling, fractious aspects of her mind. And she sublimates that darkness into Sunshine, her feature film directing debut, a tender love story and bleakly absurd road movie with moments of demented hilarity.
Written by Conti's long-time collaborator Shenoah Allen, of the Pajama Men sketch duo, and set on the dry, barren highways of his native New Mexico, the pair star as Jane and Roy, two damaged strangers brought together after she interrupts his suicide attempt in a motel room.
However, it's not Jane that Roy sees staring through the window but the human-sized Monkey. Coming round in his van as they speed away, Monkey at the wheel, Roy is out of the frying pan and into the fire, terrified by this creature that really doesn't care to be Jane and never comes out of the furry suit if she can help it.
Fleeing exploitation as a nightclub mascot at the hands of her abusive stepfather Wade (Bill Wise), she has a dream of starting a banana boat business and demands that Roy, a roving radio interviewer, drive her to a lake. Bemused by this eccentric individual and with his second chance at life, Roy agrees. However, they first need to intercept the suicide letter that he's penned for his mother.
With a subsequent quest to recover an heirloom from Roy's late, terrible father, what follows is a beautifully paced romance coloured by generational trauma, as Monkey/Jane and Roy gradually let their respective guards down and come to rely on each other, all the while pursued by the indefatigable Wade on his bike and Roy's redoubtable cop mother Gail (an excellent Melissa Chambers).
After the initial incongruity of Monkey barracking Roy with a stream of filth and expletives, immediately familiar if you've seen Conti's ventriloquist act, the funniest moments in the film belong to the pair's burgeoning sexual attraction, the kinkiness of the suit, that shame it contains. Nature finds a way, despite Jane's reluctance to be a woman rather than an oversized simian.
These touching, awkward fumblings are the film's heart. And Allen, so expressive as a sketch act, gives a wonderfully restrained turn as he respectfully yearns to get to know Jane better while giving her sufficient space to be Monkey. And, considering you barely see her face, Conti is a minor revelation, the extent of Jane's suffering somehow magnified when recounted from behind the suit's impassive eyes.
To its credit, the film is too focused on its romance to go in for much in the way of mascot-based slapstick, confident in the gentle wit and organic flowering of the pair's dialogue. And there's supplementary humour in witnessing the residents of rural, isolated New Mexico scarcely pay heed to the giant primate in their midst.
For live comedy fans, it's compelling to see Conti so completely immersed in her sidekick's character, to such a psychologically extreme extent beyond what she's touched on in her stage shows and in her Her Master's Voice documentary. Yet there are also strong echoes of Allen's crazy and often distressing family biography channelled into the script, which you can currently hear recounted elsewhere in his Fringe show Bloodlust Summertime.
Most affecting is the knowledge that Conti and Allen fell in love for real while making this film, their attraction evident on the screen, even as they go to some dark, dark places.
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