Parky At the Pictures (24/10/2025)

(Reviews of Sunlight; The House With Laughing Windows; and A Tooth Fairy Tale)

SUNLIGHT.

Although he directed a couple of plays for the stage, Tom Conti never got round to directing a feature film. Now, having cut her teeth with the documentary, His Master's Voice (2012), and the short, Living With Monkey (2014), ventriloquist-cum-actor daughter, Nina Conti, makes her feature bow behind the camera with Sunlight.

When Roy Belvedere (Shenoah Allen) started dangling from a rope attached to the ceiling fan in his New Mexico motel room, he did not expect to wake up in the front seat of his camper van with Monkey (Nina Conti) driving. He learns from the motel owner (calling to complain about the state of the room) that the British-sounding woman in the simian suit is Jane, an employee who has absconded. But Roy's main concern is to dig up his dead father to retrieve the $20,000 watch he had had buried with him, as a last act of cruelty towards the son he had abused with little hindrance from his wife, Gail (Melissa Chambers) - who gives Roy hell when he shows up at her cabin after he had sent her a suicide note.

As they drive along dusty roads, Monkey reveals that she wants to go to Colorado to open a banana pontoon business on a tourist lake. Roy offers to give her half the proceeds from the watch sale if she helps him exhume his father. A reporter for the Sunlight radio station, he has hit a rough patch and admits to feeling cosy with Monkey when they cuddle up in the camper when they stop for the night. She divulges that Wade made a move on her mother when she was dying from cancer and she admits to making the mistake of sleeping with him when he inherited the motel. Now, however, she wants to escape and insists on remaining inside the nightclub mascot uniform that Wade is so determined to retrieve (along with its contents) that he sets off in pursuit on a racing bike because he doesn't drive.

Roy has taken the wheel and the pair chat in a montage that ends with Monkey unzipping her suit so that he can fondle her breasts and slip a hand inside her underwear. They agree that this cancels out his erection from the night before and they head on to the remote cemetery with the understanding that Roy is allowed to develop feelings for Monkey, but not for Jane because she makes bad decisions that won't help either of them.

Unaware that Wade is cycling after them, Roy and Monkey start digging up his father. Time passes heavily, as Roy does the spade work and Monkey muses idly on life. But they find the watch, as the heavens open, and make a getaway from a nightwatchman with a gun. Joking that she almost swallowed one of her glass eyes when it came loose, Monkey congratulates Roy on sticking to his plan, while lamenting that she's a fantasist who has never run a business and might well make a mess of the banana boat scheme. Stopping at services, Roy washes her blistered palms and they hold hands for a second before he slides the watch on to her wrist. Following Monkey's foul-mouthed encounter with a hand-dryer, they set off in search of a motel, so that she can shower and he can wash the monkey suit for her. But Wade keeps pedalling relentlessly in their wake.

Hitting town, Roy goes to sell the watch, only to be told that both pieces are fakes. He trades them for a wolf costume and howls on the street, not knowing that he has been cheated by a crooked shopkeeper. Returning to the laundromat, he sees Wade threatening Monkey, who has locked herself inside. He cycles after them when Roy bundles his friend into the camper, but Wade hurtles after them. In desperation, Monkey opens the side door and dives on Wade, killing him and injuring herself so badly that Roy has to rush her to the nearest hospital.

The action is seen through the eyeholes of Monkey's costume, as she's rushed into theatre. But we double back to see Roy trying to bury Wade and his bicycle in his father's grave, where he's arrested by Gail, who turns out to be a cop. Roy is jailed, but his radio boss, Vashti (Rachel Kylian), finds a dictaphone in the camper, on which Monkey and Jane have left him messages. She asks Roy to make a statement for broadcast in the hope Monkey comes forward. But he hears nothing in the two years he spends inside. However, Gail has retrieved the watch and Jane has managed to open her pontoon on Colorado and she removes the monkey head when she sees Roy in the queue for a ride and they shouts their feelings to one another, as he falls off the banana into the water.

While it's never as amusing as it perhaps should be, this unconventional road movie has a poignant sweetness that goes a long way towards atoning for some of the dead-air improvisation between leads who, nevertheless, succeed in making a weirdly wonderful odd couple. Essentially stepping into a lifesize version of her famous vent puppet, Conti confirms (alongside the unstinting Shenoah Allen) what a courageous and accomplished performer she is. Here, however, she makes deft use of camera angles and the inclination of Monkey's fixed-stare head to say as much about Jane's vulnerable psychological state as the dialogue she has concocted with her co-star and fellow scribe.

Ultimately, Conti cops out of having Jane explain herself and the happy ending is unpersuasive and somewhat unearned, following the muddled discussions of such weighty issues as Larkinised parenting, compartmentalised trauma, the nature of identity, and the mystery of human attraction, as well as the hasty patchwork of scenes showing Vashti compiling a report to tie up a few of the loose ends. Perhaps executive producer Christopher Guest (who had cast Conti in For Your Consideration, 2006) might have had a little more input here? Nonetheless, there's no denying the originality of the concept and the quirky chemistry of the leads. This is underscored by Christoph Bauschinger's edgy music, particularly during Riaz Meer's montage sequences, in which Conti's positioning of Monkey on the moveable passenger seat leaves you longing to hear what they are chatting about - because, while this boldly ambitious debut doesn't quite come off, everyone will be on Roy and Monkey's side by the end.

THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS.

Pupi Avati will celebrate his 87th birthday on 3 November and CinemaItaliaUK marks the occasion with a special Halloween screening of the Bolognese director's giallo masterpiece, The House With Laughing Windows (La casa dalle finestre che ridono, 1976), which has been lovingly restored in 4K. Employed by a frozen food company, Avati was all set to become a jazz clarinetist when he saw Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963). His filmography is notable for its diversity, but this simmering small-town chiller - along with the similarly themed, Zeder (1983) - has made him a cult favourite among horror aficionados.

Over the opening titles, the rasping voice of an unseen artist insists upon the need for purity in his brushwork and use of colour. However, this fevered obsession has excruciating consequences for the model (John Marquette) posing for a fresco depicting the brutal martyrdom of St Sebastian. Several decades later, a ferry transports art restorer Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) to the remote village where the church stands. He has been hired by the diminutive Mayor Solmi (Bob Tonelli), who hopes that the painting can become a tourist attraction and make the benighted area some money.

The parish priest, Don Orsi (Eugene Walter), isn't a fan of the fresco, but he shows Stefano around the church that he had himself restored after it was used as an SS barrack during the war. Some in the village want the picture to be left alone and one woman phones the guest house where Stefano is lodging to ward him off.

While dining at the restaurant owned by Poppi (Andrea Matteuzzi), Stefano runs into the local teacher (Vanna Busoni), who tries to flirt with him before she is interrupted by Stefano's old friend, Dr Antonio Mazza (Giulio Pizzirani), who had recommended him to Solmi. He is recovering from a nervous breakdown and Stefano is surprised when he confides that he has made a disturbing discovery about the fresco and its creator, Buono Legnani (Tonino Corazzari).

Having spent the night with the teacher, Stefano stops at the river to see Antonio, who is examining the water quality after it was contaminated during the war. He tells Stefano about Lugnani becoming known as `the painter of agonies' after going insane in the house with laughing windows that he shared with his two sisters. Solmi passes by and warns Stefano that Antonio has become prone to flights of fancy. They pause to watch an elderly woman gathering flowers and Stefano asks Lidio (Pietro Brambilla), the young church sextant, who keeps leaving them in a vase on the altar.

Following an altercation with Solmi's chauffeur, Coppola (Gianni Cavina), Poppi shows Stefano the collection of Lugnani paintings owned by his estranged wife (Flavia Giorgi) and reveals that Solmi is keen to purchase them. Poppi explains that Lugnani had syphilis and that no woman would pose for him. So, he became his own mirror model and used his arm as a palette so that the paint on the canvas had been in contact with his skin. They are interrupted by a call from Antonio asking Stefano to meet him in his hotel room. However, Antonio falls from the window and the police marshal (Ferdinando Orlandi) is uninterested when Stefano reports that he saw a shadowy figure leaving the room after pushing his friend to his death.

When the concierge (Ines Ciaschetti) informs Stefano that he needs to move out because a party of tourists has booked in to use the nearby thermal baths, Lidio finds him a room in the house occupied by a bedridden paraplegic (Pina Borione). She accuses Lidio of being a thief for bringing her stale food, but she welcomes Stefano, as he will break the silence of the neglected old place. When he packs his bags at the hotel, however, he is surprised when the chambermaid (Carla Astolfi) tells him that there are no tourists coming and he wonders why the concierge had lied. However, he is also distracted, as he has seen Francesca (Francesca Marciano), the replacement teacher he had seen on the ferry when he first arrived.

Unpacking at the Legnani house, Stefano hears footsteps, but the old lady assures him that they are the only occupants. She is happy to have him visit, although he is spooked when he notices the same kind of flowers from the altar on her dressing table. He is further unnerved by footsteps in the church when he is working and he finds a tape recorder in the cellar when he goes to investigate. Despite blowing the fuses, the machine plays the speech heard over the credits and Stefano seeks out the priest, only to run into a woman with a veiled hat carrying some flowers. Now disturbed, Stefano goes to visit the teacher, but discovers that Francesca has moved into her room and she shows him the snails that are slithering around her fridge.

Having uncovered previously unseen female figures in the composition, Stefano attends Antonio's funeral. Lidio boasts that he has put a live rat in the coffin and Stefano thinks he can hear it scrabbling, as he notices the woman with the veiled hat. He lunches with Don Orsi, who takes him fishing in his boat and confides that his landlady is suffering from a venereal disease and wants nothing to do with the church - just as the priest is disinterested in the fresco and its painter.

Arriving home in the dark, Stefano finds Francesca playing the Legnani tape and he offers to cook for her. She asks if he slept with her predecessor, but he avoids the question. He notices she has a lighter with the initials `B.L.' engraved on the case and she claims to have had it for years. They sleep together and she moves in. But they argue when Stefano goes to play the tape for Coppola (who watched as a boy when Legnani painted his laundress mother on her death bed) and finds the voice has been erased. Stefano blames Francesca, who tries to get back in his good books. But she finds his fixation with the Legnanis creepy and reluctantly remains in the old house after Stefano finds a folder full of letters and scribblings in Antonio's room, which lead him to believe that the family came into contact with tribal magic while in Brazil and that the sisters procured models for Buono to paint in their death throes.

Cycling in the darkness, Stefano compares the photo with the figures either side of St Sebastian and Don Orsi agrees that they resemble the artist's sisters. When Stefano notices clay on his shoes similar to that outside the Legnani house, the priest claims that he was called to give the old woman the last sacrament. Stefano shows the snapshot to Poppi, who confirms that it shows the siblings, whose incestuous antics shocked everyone except his wife, who fell for Buono. Poppi explains how the authorities tried to incarcerate the painter after he finished the fresco, but his sisters protected him right up until 4 June 1931, when he immolated himself. When Stefano goes to the library to consult the death certificate, he discovers that Buono was only `presumed dead', as no body had ever been found.

As he leaves, Solmi complains about the state of the restoration and Stefano dashes to the church to find that the fresco has been vandalised. Lidio seems to find it amusing, but Stefano is furious, as he now knows beyond doubt that Antonio was murdered to keep him quiet. He promises Francesca that they can leave the next morning and he leaves her packing while he resigns to Solmi. Instead, he finds Coppola (who has been fired for drinking) and he tells Stefano that the Legnani sisters are still alive. Moreover, he takes him to the dilapidated house with laughing windows, where he digs up the bones of the St Sebastian model.

As a storm starts to break, Lidio bursts into the house and tries to rape Francesca. They are watched through a half-open door and Stefano and Coppola arrive on a motorbike and sidecar to find Francesca's bloodied bodied hanging by her raised arms from a ceiling hook. However, when Stefano fetches the marshal, the corpse has gone, as have the bones that Coppola showed him in the shallow grave. When his body shows up in the river, the marshal cautions Stefano that he's in big trouble. But he notices the blade scars on Coppola's torso and realises he was telling the truth when he had claimed that the sisters had tried to kill him for their brother to paint.

When he gets a phone call from Francesca at the hotel, Stefano goes to investigate. Hearing a man screaming, he goes to the attic to find the old woman and her sister stabbing Lidio so that Buono - who is disfigured and propped in the wardrobe - can paint him. Horrified, Stefano tries to escape, but Laura Legnani stabs him and chases after him when he stumbles into the marsh reeds.

Waking next morning, Stefano rides the motorbike into the village. No one answers their door to him, although Solmi calls the police in Ferrara. Bleeding heavily, Stefano seeks sanctuary in the church, only to discover that Don Orsi is the second sister and Laura emerges from behind a curtain in the sacristy to cackle menacingly, as Stefano starts to despair, even though a police siren can be heard in the middle distance.

Once you're over the fact that Lino Capolicchio looks so much like J.D. Vance, there's much to intrigue in this meticulous exercise in suspense building. The storyline, co-written by Antonio Avati, Gianni Cavina, and Maurizio Costanzo bears a passing similarity to that in Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (1973), as Stefano is lured into a nest of vipers while seeking to uncover a sinister conspiracy. However, it has been pointed out that Avati might also have been echoing the theme of Michael Findlay's slasher, Snuff (1976), by exploring the connection between death and the creation of art.

It appears to have been pure coincidence, however, that Avati should have focussed on this particular victim of the Diocletianic Persecution at the same time that Derek Jarman was shooting Sebastiane (1976). Indeed, Avati had written the first draft of the screenplay (under the title La luce dell'ultimo piano) earlier in the decade after hearing a story about the exhumation of a priest in the village of Sasso Marconi. But he only returned to the scenario (which he heavily revised) after the box-office failure of Bordella (1976). Although we don't learn how the Legnanis fared during the war, the mere mention of this period suggests that Avati was still mindful of his uncredited contribution to the screenplay for Pier Paolo Pasolin's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, 1976).

The fact that Avati places the Legnani sisters in the place usually occupied by the archers firing arrows into Sebastian's torso or St Irene and her holy companions tending to her wounds gives the fresco a blasphemous frisson, which Avati reinforces by revealing that Don Orsi is the unnamed second sister. He/she is played by Eugene Walter, who had memorably played the Mother Superior in Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (Giulietta degli spiriti, 1965). But some have taken exception to the depiction of women in the film, as incestuous psychopaths and loose-moralled teachers who hop into bed with the rather charmless Stefano at the drop of a hat.

Capolicchio never quite convinces as the finest restorer in the Academy, while his stoicism prevents him from conveying the dread he professes to feel. Nevertheless, Avati and cinematographer Pasquale Rachini trap him in a doorway while retreating along a dark corridor in the best shot of a film filled with memorable images, most notably the view of the Rocky Horror red lips painted around the window frames of the abandoned house. Production designer Luciana Morosetti merits mention for this alone. But the interiors are also splendidly atmospheric, as are the tableaux that take their cues from Guido Reni's `St Sebastian' (c.1615). Giuseppe Baghdighian's measured editing and Amedeo Tommasi's Goblinesque score are also highly effective. But it's Avati's mastery of mystery and mood that make this so absorbing and unsettling.

A TOOTH FAIRY TALE.

There have been a number of films featuring the Tooth Fairy. Isla Fisher's Toothiana in Peter Ramsey's Rise of the Guardians (2012) is probably the best known, but transactions involving milk teeth and hard cash have also taken place in the likes of Melanie Mayron's Toothless (1997), the pairing of Michael Lembeck's Tooth Fairy (2010) and Alex Zamm's Tooth Fairy 2 (2012), and Juan Pablo Buscarini's The Hairy Tooth Fairy (2007). Horror fans might also want to check out Jonathan Liebesman's Darkness Falls (2003), Chuck Bowman's The Tooth Fairy (2006), and Guillermo Del Toro's Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010). But Michael Johnson's animation, A Tooth Fairy Tale, falls very much into the category of half-term treat.

Teenage fairy, Van (Booboo Stewart), was born with a hole in one of his wings. His mother, Opal (Viveca A. Fox), is dotingly supportive, but his father, Orum (Max Jobrani), drives him hard, as he runs the school that teaches fairies how to find children's teeth under pillows and replace them with a golden coin. Too busy dreaming about zooming around on his skateboard, Van pays little attention when Orum explains how the fairies have a co-dependent, but estranged relationship with the goblins who mine the gold.

Having been informed that the source of magic lies within him, Van is presented with a specially carved wand by Orum on the night of his first mission. However, he struggles to find a tooth and almost gets crushed by a girl who rolls over in her sleep. Moreover, he drops his coin and, in chasing after it, follows a mysterious figure in a crash helmet, who scurries into the entrance to a gold mine. When she removes the helmet, Van sees she is a catsuited green goblin with pink hair and he is so taken by her that he can barely explain to his father how he came to lose his wand and his gold in returning without a tooth.

Fairies and goblins believe the worst of each other, with the former thinking the latter are dumb and odiferous, while the latter consider the former to be entitled and dishonest. Van's father is less concerned that his son has consorted with the enemy than disappointed he has let him down, as the head of the tooth fairy academy. With Opal offering encouragement, Van sets off on a second expedition, However, he gives the other tooth fairies the slip and goes in search of the gold mine. He crash lands into a spider's web, however, where he meets Rupee (Nicolas J. Greco), a troll who warns him about a spider named Webster (Jon Lovitz).

When his new wand fails to free him, Van uses his dagger to cut them both free and they have to run from the furious Webster. However, he has more luck getting into the gold mine and is pleased to bump into Gemma (Larkin Bell) again. She is mortified he has entered Goblin City, but whisks him to her room after an encounter with a bully who thinks she's a dork.

Gemma explains that she wants to be a scientist and is working on a way to use fairy dust to combat the sensitivity to light that keeps goblins under ground. Van gazes adoringly, as she tells of her ambitions to learn to fly and travel the world, as her grandmother had longed to do. He is amazed when she patches his wing, although he has to hide when her parents - Kingston (Tony Nation) and Asherah (Mary Deaton) - come in to scold her for wasting her time on silly dreams. Leaving her mouse friend in her room, Gemma takes Van to the disused planetarium that her grandmother (Paty Lombard) had once run. Her holographic image describes the stars and warns about the threat posed by spiders. But Van is too smitten to take much notice and he is still thinking about Gemma when he gets home after failing his mission for a second night.

Grounded and forced to work in the processing plant, Van is delighted when Gemma turns up after working out how to use fairy dust to protect her skin and power a jet pack. She is shovelling a fresh supply into a container when Van spots her and they go flying through the forest and over a snow-capped mountain together (to the sound of a cornball rock ballad). When her fuel gives out, Van catches Gemma and takes her to a cave while she works out how to get home. She notices drawings made by her grandmother on the walls and she tells Van that they have the chance to bring fairies and goblins together - if their parents will let them. Rupee appears to guide them back to Goblin City under cover of darkness, although Webster spots them and informs the ravenous Queen Mortina (Fran Drescher), who orders him to deliver her a feast and he makes plans after destroying the cave drawings because they reveal how fairies and goblins acting together can beat spiders.

Dismayed that the drawings have gone when they persuade their parents to see them and explore fairy/goblin detente, Van and Gemma agree to run away. However, by the time he reaches the rendezvous, she has been captured by Webster and wrapped in silk. Van follows the clues to rescue her, only to get trapped himself. Friends and family rally to the cause and agree a truce before going into battle against the spiders in special armour suits.

Tiring of jousting, Mortina spins webs to pin the interlopers down. Just as she is about to tuck in, however, Rupee leads a troll army into the cave and Mortina and Webster plunge into a fast-running river because they made the mistake of touching the trolls' hair. Van revives the fading Gemma with her potion and the film ends with a glimpse of a harmonious future with goblins and fairies working together and Van and Gemma closing in for their first kiss.

Clearly inspired by the Twilight saga, this is an engaging treatise on embracing difference that should appeal to tweenagers with a yen for fantasy. Such is the story's focus on Van and Gemma that the secondary characters (few of whom are named on screen) are sketchily drawn, especially the couple's close friends, who get to pair up after the big battle. Little is also made of Van's pet ladybird and the mouse in Gemma's room, who seems to have been borrowed from the Hispanic legend of Ratoncito Pérez.

While the contrasting Fairyland and Goblin City backdrops are rather impressive and the dynamic between their denizens is cogently delineated in underlining the discussion of magic and science, the character design is the usual mix of inspired and insipid. Van looks like a particularly sappy member of a boy band, while Gemma's pixie dream girl green/pink combination is enhanced by flashes of Kristen Stewartesque coyness. The bearded fathers seem to have been plucked from Sword and Sorcery Central Casting, while the mothers demonstrate that it's possible to be slim-waisted and buxom while also having the common sense to end centuries of macho prejudice and division.

The action drifts into video game territory during the cloyingly quaint `Take Flight' sequence and the cave showdown, which follows the current fight scene trait of employing a blizzard of rapidly cut snippets to avoid depicting any actual violence. But it's nice to see the trolls saving the day, if only because they are excluded from the closing fairy/goblin love-in.