Life can change in the blink of an eye. One moment, you are ready to end it all. The next, you have been whisked away on a road trip by a gigantic monkey who cracks wise and insists they are going to start a business. All the while you have a crazed old man on a bicycle hunting you down relentlessly. It all sounds, to put it bluntly, very peculiar. But comedian and ventriloquist Nina Conti specialises in weird. An accomplished comedy and festival act, Conti now joins forces with Shenoah Allen to take a variation of one of her characters, Monkey, to the big screen. You aren’t always sure what to make of it, but Sunlight ultimately emerges as an uplifting story of hope on the fringes of life and how to reinvent yourself in the most wonderful, bizarre of ways.
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jane (Conti) is desperate to escape a controlling relationship and what she sees as her tendency towards making bad choices. Stealing the monkey costume used by her partner as a mascot for his club, Jane makes a run for it. By chance, she meets Roy (Allen), a suicidal radio presenter, and stops him from taking his own life. Together they go on the run, hatching an ambitious plan to raise some money to fund Monkey’s new business venture. Monkey meanwhile grapples with the woman inside them, insisting that Roy cannot indulge Jane’s desires in case she leads them down the wrong path.
This is one strange, peculiar road trip comedy. The monkey suit is a constant source of joviality, its empty expression communicating everything and nothing at the same time. Roy understandably doesn’t know what to make of it at first, and neither will you. But eventually his bond with Monkey becomes very close and the pair become more comfortable with one another (“I’m an armchair Roy” says Monkey after Roy comments on the softness of their fur). Sunlight doesn’t try and pass Monkey off as some legitimate being or, god forbid, a real animal. The reality of it being someone in a costume is never lost, and forms the basis for infectious joke after infectious joke. The sheer silliness of the whole situation – not just its premise, but its often comically staged presentation – is as charming as it is entertaining.
The overwhelmingly absurd look and feel of the film permeates through everything, even the most intense emotional scenes. Wade (a bit-between-his-teeth Bill Wise) prepares his bicycle for the hot pursuit with amusingly disconcerting levels of menace that just mark him out as a weirdo. But beneath the thick layer of weird and wonderful is a touching story of identity. Monkey is afraid to let Jane out, and Jane is afraid of coming to the surface. At one point, while Roy looks at both Monkey and Jane simultaneously after one of Monkey’s eyes falls out, Monkey claims Roy doesn’t know who they are. There is a grappling of identity and a blurring of performer and character that not only makes Monkey/Jane a fascinating central character, but speaks for how far performers will go to lose themselves in the characters we become.
Conti, unsurprisingly given her career to date, swaps seamlessly between Jane and Monkey and incorporates the process of changing between the two into the fabric of her performance. Jane is a character riddled with doubt and insecurity, while Monkey is steadfast and sure of what they want from life. It isn’t difficult to see what the appeal of Monkey is; their bravado is everything Jane isn’t. And Conti slips between the two so effortlessly, showcasing her acting abilities at their best but in a very new light. Allen too, who also lends a compassionate air to affairs as the scriptwriter, cuts a highly believable and relatable figure as Roy. He might not grab the headlines like Monkey does, but his story and emergence from the darkest point of his life is as much of a feel-good story as Monkey’s various escapades.
While not a long film, certain stretches of their journey feel too prolonged, and a musical joke about how many holes Monkey has gets old far too quickly. But Conti has delivered an accomplished debut feature by sticking firmly to her strengths. Sunlight is an often hilarious and touching comedy about moving on from a version of yourself that you no longer want to be, leaving your past self behind and looking forward to a brighter future. Even if that future involves dressing up as animals and riding a giant banana across a lake.
Sunlight received its world premiere on 17th August 2024 as part of the 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival.