Rating: NR | Runtime: 96 minutes
Release Date: June 6th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Sunrise Films
Director(s): Nina Conti
Writer(s): Shenoah Allen & Nina Conti

Let’s cause a travesty!

Roy’s (Shenoah Allen) plan was suicide. He went to the Sunlight Motel (coincidentally, the same name as the radio station he works for, Sunlight Radio) with rope, strung it around the ceiling fan, and put it around his neck. So, the fact that catching a glimpse of a person wearing a human-sized monkey costume looking in through his window was the reason he ultimately kicked out the chair from beneath him shouldn’t transfer any blame or guilt. Sure, he might have had second thoughts, but him being far enough into the plan that an unexpected surprise could make it reality is no one’s fault but his own. That said, Jane (Nina Conti) couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t save his life.

This is our unforgettable entry into the aptly titled Sunlight, direct by Conti and co-written by Allen. That quick shot of “Monkey” (Jane’s defense mechanism and alter ego—reimagined from Conti’s ventriloquist act) followed by Roy’s descent before the cut to black reopens within the latter’s Airstream as it drives down a desert road. We are therefore waking up right alongside Roy in the passenger seat, completely disoriented as to how he got there and where he’s going. Seeing “Monkey” behind the wheel only makes things more unsettling with her explanation about “borrowing” the vehicle to drive herself to Colorado providing zero help. Because A) she’s a monkey and B) he’s supposed to be dead. These aren’t normal circumstances.

That said, “normal” is precisely what both these characters hope to avoid. It’s why Roy tired of existence and Jane hides beneath the skin of an alternate persona. “Normal” has never been enough. “Normal” has only ever felt abnormal. Some of the reason is trauma. Some of it is insecurity. Roy has begun to consider his job meaningless—hack work getting paid to be an obsequious host to interviewees with nothing important to say. Jane has begun to acknowledge that her self-destructive patterns have placed her on a road towards isolation—a slave to her worst impulses for no other reason than to feel something regardless of whether it makes her life worse in the process.

Joining forces is thus as much about guilt-laden coincidence as kismet since they are both unhinged enough to deal with the other sans judgement. She needs to go to a lake in Colorado to at least fulfill the beginning of her dream to own a pontoon boat business regardless of having no money or plans to do so once she arrives. He needs to reconcile the fact that he’s still alive with the reality that he’s spent the past few months assuming the opposite—meaning he must call his boss (Rachel Kylian) and mother (Melissa Chambers) to course correct. And it’s through this imperative that he discovers an answer for both of their woes: a twenty-thousand-dollar watch buried six feet deep with his father’s body.

This road trip’s destination becomes secondary to the journey as a result. Yes, that money can make Jane’s dream real while its procurement can help Roy exorcize whatever demons his father’s memory still conjures, but these are Band-Aid fixes born from the same faulty impulses as her poor choices in sexual partners and his decision to kill himself. Once the initial joy of the distraction is over, both would inevitably fall back into their usual pattern of self-loathing. So, the idea is that the other’s company might change or reveal something that refocuses their motivations to provide an off-ramp from their constant ability to get in their own way. Maybe their respective troubles can allow them to be the other’s inspiration towards healing.

It’s that potential that makes Sunlight a profoundly compassionate and heartfelt drama despite its overtly insane premise and specific brand of darkly sardonic hilarity. Credit Conti and Allen for never allowing their script to forget that purpose too since the comedy could have succeeded on its own. They could have pivoted this complex, tender love story into a Hollywood rom-com by centering generic tropes that don’t care about the reasons Roy and Jane are here. Instead, they stay true to the characters’ fallibilities. They allow the duo’s worst impulses to continue sabotaging their best laid plans so that the other can step back with understanding and honestly express that it’ll be okay. That the goal isn’t to exploit the other like everyone else in their lives. They get it.

They know what it’s like to feel less than. To be smothered, ridiculed, and controlled (pair Bill Wise’s Wade with Chambers’ Gail to serve as two very different sides of the same “we know what’s best for you” coin of “love”). If Jane needs to be “Monkey” to survive, Roy won’t seek to shatter the façade and let her down too. If Roy needs to dig up his father’s grave for catharsis, Jane won’t tell him he’s being dumb. And neither act must be “healthy” to be necessary. They simply need the room to see their respective adventures through so they can know what it looks like on the other side. Having someone to look out for them while doing it frees them from their own self-doubt. For the first time, someone accepts them on their terms. Loves them on their terms.

The humor would still work without this authentic strain of empathetic humanity holding it together, but the fact our laughter isn’t in service of hollow cliché ensures it won’t also prove disposable. Conti excels at portraying the consequences her characters face by never undercutting the danger inherent to the absurdity (this journey cannot work without jail time) and always finding the joke in the drama (a scene flirting with romantic undertones is expertly subverted by the monkey suit’s mechanics). So, no matter how wild things get, Sunlight doesn’t relinquish its grasp on its core emotional reality. And all the while Conti and Allen refuse to turn Jane and Roy’s pain into the punch line. Every joke is instead born from the humanity their torment has yet to fully defeat.

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Nina Conti as “Monkey” in SUNLIGHT; courtesy of Vertigo Releasing.