Rotting in the Sun · reception & legacy
2023 · Sebastián Silva
How Rotting in the Sun has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It landed at Sundance 2023 as the festival's designated shock-comedy talking point, and after MUBI put it out the conversation didn't fade — it settled in fast as a modern queer cult item rather than a one-weekend provocation.
What's debated
The perennial fight: is Jordan Firstman playing an insufferable version of himself a razor-sharp influencer satire, or just genuinely insufferable — and is all that casual nudity honesty or a gimmick?
Its footprint
This is the movie that made 'most penises ever in a film' a genuine discourse cycle, and it turned gloomy Romanian pessimist E.M. Cioran — whose book Silva's character mopes around reading — into an unlikely Letterboxd in-joke.
Where it stands
An instant Letterboxd favourite in the unhinged-queer-cinema shelf — the 'you have to see this, I can't explain it at work' recommendation of 2023.