When it comes to monkey costumes, you can keep your “Better Man” biopic C.G.I. Nina Conti’s “Sunlight” brings its own bizarro, handmade appeal: A gnarly love story that starts with a guy waking up in an RV driven by a simian-suited stranger. It’s a movie within the indie subgenre of comic encounters between lost outsiders, but powered by its own fringe logic of attraction and rebellion.
The stranger in the toylike disguise turns out to be a woman (Conti) fleeing her manipulative stepfather, who took over her mother’s motel. That’s where she found Roy (Shenoah Allen) after a failed suicide attempt in his room. Her name, we eventually learn, is Jane. The RV actually belongs to Roy, a mild-mannered radio host burdened by a hectoring mom and tough memories of his deceased father.
Not exactly a meet-cute, but their cracked road trip never loses its warmth under the New Mexico sun. The big question looms: Just who is Jane, and why the blank-eyed monkey suit? But we also wonder how Roy got to his wit’s end. “Sunlight” essentially follows two people helping each other extract and preserve what’s left of their sanity and will to live.
Conti bases Jane’s furry alter-ego on her monkey ventriloquist act, part of her career in British TV and theater. A little of “Sunlight,” which she directs and co-wrote with Allen, goes a long way. But there’s still something to seeing a performer go for broke, purging a character’s shame and despair through a screwy, confessional sense of humor.
Sunlight
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters.
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