If this installation were a film pitch for Wong Kar Wai – and it’s hard to imagine that it’s anything but – it would end up in development hell. Pencils and oils barely cover the surface of the plywood panels on which Phatsimo Suntstrom set out her storyboard. The genre is ‘noir’, and the twist that the sinister protagonist is female.
No gasps so far. With the right lighting, this story could be a mid-century colonial classic. Phatsimo Suntstrom doesn’t deliver. Yet, even the paintings’ faux sentimentalism could be forgivable in a skilful edit. Less so is the painter’s timid decision to commission an elaborate stage set made from her trademark plywood. The Curve could be the villa from Robbe-Grillet, but it isn’t. In the final print, neither actor takes the spotlight, and neither deserves it.
