53 Sundays (now on Netflix) presents the burning question: How many bickering siblings does it take to change a lightbulb? That’s not a joke or a metaphor but a literalism in Spanish director Cesc Gay’s adaptation of his stage play of the same title. Carmen Machi and Javier Gutierrez lead the four-way ensemble in a three-act story that mostly plays out two people at a time in a single location, and the result is funny, prickly and ultimately gently poignant.
53 SUNDAYS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Carol (Alexandra Jimenez) isn’t one of the siblings. She’s an in-law who functions as a sort of objective entry point to the story, and talks directly at us as she info-dumps a whole bunch of stuff on us right off the bat, outlining the personalities of these middle-aged people who are about to argue in various states of aggression and passive aggression for the next 78 minutes. Julian (Javier Camara) is her husband, a longtime actor of questionable accomplishment who she married five years ago; they have a cat and a perfectly fine rented apartment. Natalia (Machi) is Julian’s uptight sister and Victor (Gutierrez) is his well-moneyed brother. Natalia wants the three of them to sit down and discuss the state of their 89-year-old father, a widower who lives alone and has been struggling as of late. Seems reasonable enough.
But these siblings rarely get together, and we’re about to learn why. Their communication skills seem to be significantly flawed. Scratch that – they’re absolutely significantly flawed, to the point where they talk around and around the point in an amusingly frustrating manner. They fixate on an ugly vase Victor bought for Julian and Carol, the lightbulb that needs to be changed in their father’s bedroom, the novel Victor wrote over 53 Sundays, titled 53 Sundays, that he told Natalia about but not Julian, who seems jealous that his sister gets to waffle and shift on the balls of her feet and avoid telling Victor the truth about the quality of said novel, and he doesn’t. Yet I’m not sure if he really does want to waffle and shift over the quality of said novel, or is simply content being upset about being left out. Such is the state of these maniacs.
In the first act, Victor cancels at the last minute, leaving Natalia and Julian to hang out at his and Carol’s apartment and banter for weeks, months, millennia at a time about who should go change the lightbulb at their father’s house – she and Victor decided Julian should do it, since Julian doesn’t have much going on, a fact that Julian is rather defensive about, in denial, really. This is when Julian learns about the novel that he hasn’t known about for at least 53 Sundays. That day, Julian got an acting gig playing a tomato in a gazpacho commercial, and there’s no pride or shame in it, just matter-of-fact truth and our inevitable amusement. Anybody surprised by Julian’s bitter, sarcastic tone? Didn’t think so.
In the second act, Natalia backs out – she suffers from regular migraine headaches. So Julian passive-aggressively prods Victor to finally tell him about the novel and give him a copy, which he autographs (yes, ugh) with a dedication that reflects the condescension he serially levies at his brother the tomato. In the third act, all three finally convene and we watch as jealousy, competitiveness, animosity and slights real or imagined play a part in various shifting allegiances among them. Are they even aware that they’re being petty buttheads, or that they aren’t addressing the immediacy of their father’s situation, which is surely much more than just a stupidass lightbulb? They’re hopeless. Nothing’s going to change here, unless the world decides to change things for them.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Roman Polanski’s (I know) 2011 adaptation of Broadway hit Carnage is a similar showcase of skilled comedio-dramatic actors delivering smart dialogue.
Performance Worth Watching: Be grateful Jimenez is present to calm our frayed and frustrated nerves with the occasional funny and tension-puncturing glance, gesture or interjection.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: The answer? It obviously only takes one, but nonsensical family bureaucracy, self-centeredness, self-aggrandizement, pride and other inessential bullroar inevitably complicate the simplest of tasks. 53 Sundays concludes with a bit of tragicomic irony that’s deliciously ruthless, and a reward for those of us who just listened to these three siblings, in their own words, “argue for the sake of arguing” for well over an hour. In our words, though, these people are various gradations on the spectrum of assholes, and they deserve to feel all those conflicting and complicated emotions.
They aren’t that bad, though. No serial killers or politicians among them. They’re fairly average civilians navigating the treacherous byways between ego and insecurity: Julian’s lack of career success has given him an inferiority complex. Victor acts like a big shot even though he married into his money, and now uses his novel as a tool to solicit praise. And Natalia has martyr syndrome, since she does a disproportionate amount of work caring for their father. Meanwhile, Carol occasionally bops into a scene to remind two of the siblings to wait for the third to enter the room so they can all fight more efficiently.
And so 53 Sundays plays out as a comedy about how life happens while you sit around being trifling little shits who can’t get over their trivial grievances and slight butthurtedness or their very teeny-tiny selves for an hour to go check in on their elderly father. They keep the least juicy secrets in the history of drama and treat them like the Ark of the Covenant. The overarching message of this story? You may see yourself in some of their actions, but it doesn’t mean you have to be like these people.
Our Call: 53 Sundays is a succinctly funny and insightful character study brimming over with well-written dialogue. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.