West of Sunshine is a 2018 drama about a father who has less than a day to pay back a debt, while looking after his young son.
It’s not so much through the lens of a child that we witness a frazzled day in the life of a man teetering on the edge but how it is constantly shielded from him that gives writer/director Jason Raftopoulos‘ Australian drama most of its weight. West of Sunshine is a sort of small scale road trip movie though it doesn’t travel all that far in terms of distance, instead driving to close the gaps in an already unsteady relationship. It’s a simple yet affecting little journey, not made all that significant by it’s approach but nonetheless a well made and acted feature.
Jimmy (Damian Hill) lives in the outskirts of Melbourne, working for a courier company and starting a rather hectic day. He’s picked up his friend and co-worker Steve (Arthur Angel) but forgotten he’s got to look after his kid Alex (Tyler Perham). Reminded so by the child’s frustrated mother, he now is straddled with his son on a day he’s got a lot to do, most importantly, to pay off a massive debt to a violent loan shark (Tony Nikolakopoulos). Late for work, he’s forced to use his own car, a vintage model once own by his dad while trying to keep Alex free of the spiral.
Shot mostly in and around that car, the story is not meant to be all that deep, the characters instead generating the greater interest. Jimmy is a near hopelessly flawed man with a gambling problem, his history not so much important but the consequences of such urgent. We never find out why he owes money, and as it unfolds, it seems not to matter, only that he he’s got to pay it, scrambling around the suburbs in desperation to find anyone who can help him. That puts Jimmy in the company of all sorts of people that Alex sees in scattered connection to something not quite right. Some he begins to suspect are exactly who they are.
Jimmy is not a good guy, beaten down by his own life, not the father he thinks he is, and out of touch with how to solve his own problems. He’s short with Alex, thinks more highly of his car than anyone, and depends on others to see him through. Naturally, the film tries to right that path through the day’s evolution, building blocks in a bridge to get him more closer to his son, though admittedly, some of these moments feel a little on the nose in doing so, perhaps a trapping of the genre itself.
At around 75 minutes, West of Sunshine is economical, knowing what it wants and needs to do, slipping its symbolic parts into place with a kind of mechanical precision. There aren’t many surprises as it leads to its purposeful close, but for what it intends, succeeds just the same, boxing it up with the right degree of emotional investment. Recommended.