That Silva’s fictional iteration lives in a building under construction owned by a wealthy and entitled white Mexican man, Mateo (Mateo Riesta), points to the glaring gentrification the Mexican capital is currently undergoing at the hands of American and European “expats” who have taken over entire neighborhoods pushing out residents not only from housing but even from getting service at restaurants. Smaller reminders are also sprinkled throughout: in the background of a latter scene, a white guy speaking English on the phone describes the city as the crossbreed between New York and L.A.
Distraught by his unfilled artistic aspirations and constantly under the influence, Sebastián opts for taking a trip to Zicatela, a popular gay nudist beach. Surrounded by penises of all shapes, sizes, and complexions, he brews in his now sun-drenched nihilism. He wears the relentless thoughts of ending his life like a badge of intellectual superiority. There’s something equally fascinating and hard to watch about Silva putting the shallowness and inner ugliness of a person based on himself on display in such irredeemable fashion. Even if the misanthropy is entirely a performance detached from any truth, it’s effectively acerbic.
With the unvarnished immediacy of a handheld camera, cinematographer Gabriel Díaz takes us into the ocean, where Sebastián attempts to save the life of writer and comedian Jordan Firstman, also playing a take on himself. The near-death, chance encounter with Firstman, who gushes about his love for the director’s work, doesn’t do much to uplift Sebastián’s spirits. If anything, it confirms his feelings on the emptiness of internet culture.
Firstman’s bubbly and insufferably uninhibited on-screen persona clashes with Silva’s tortured and misunderstood artiste demeanor. And yet, given his need for some quick cash to stay afloat, the latter agrees to work on the social media star’s upcoming TV show. Neither of their characters is someone one would want to spend much time with, much less together. “Rotting in the Sun” is a deliberate exercise in tolerance, like most of Silva’s films.