日光情人 (2006)

I was fortunate enough to catch this film at Outfest in Los Angeles. For me, it's always refreshing when filmmakers can succeed at not only telling their audience a touching and real life romance, but also when they go above and beyond traditional narrative structures in telling their story. With Patrick McGuinn's beautiful, sun-drenched film, "Sun Kissed", he not only gives us a chance to indulge in the lives of his characters--deliciously played by Greg Marcel, John Ort, and the mesmerizing Laura Leigh, but he also challenges us to lose a slight grasp of our reality and suspend our traditional conscious for 90 minutes. This is the real cinema experience, not reality television. At times the film appears to be disjointed--this is true, but McGuinn always manages to let us enjoy every frame of the surreal palette his cinematographer, Nickolas Rossi paints for the screen. With a pop soundtrack by the Sea and Cake, this film is more of an experience--at times frightening and kinetic--and at other times as warm and drenched with passion as the sun baked desert where the characters play.