Prime time

Sunshine

An American advertising producer in Shanghai tries to sell fast food to the Chinese. An endearing portrait of a modern day "Mad Man."

Sunshine tells two stories with equal aplomb—an ethnographic snapshot of the young, developing Chinese ad industry, but also the confessions of a jaded, cynical American ad man. As our narrator, Benet’s perspective is undoubtedly at the center of the film, but what is most praise-worthy about Sunshine is how intertwined the two stories are, and how they mutually inform and cast doubt upon the other. The film’s early development focuses on the creation of a McDonald’s commercial, and follows beats familiar to fans of Lost in Translation and other travel films, as Benet half-mocks, is half-amazed by the cultural idiosyncracies in his interactions.