THIS MUST BE THE PLACE (TBC)
When: Now showing
Where: General release
PROMISING Italian writer/director Paolo Sorrentino’s first English-language film is an odd creature that’s more than a little messy – just like its lead character.
Clad all in black like an ageing emo, complete with crazy mascara and red lippy, Sean Penn plays retired rock star Cheyenne. A thinly veiled reference to The Cure’s Robert Smith, this high-pitched caricature and his ponderous melancholy are more Edward Scissorhands.
Cheyenne lives out his post-wild child dotage in a palatial Dublin mansion with his firefighter wife (Almost Famous’ Frances McDormand in a brief but fun turn). His handball games played in an unfilled swimming pool are interrupted by news of the death of the father he hasn’t spoken to in more than 30 years.
The thin plot takes a turn for the predictable when Cheyenne sets out by boat for the US to bury his father. This is roughly when any semblance of direction also heads for the hills.
Following a meeting with ageing Nazi hunter Mordecai, played with flair by Judd Hirsch, the film turns into a meandering derivative roadtrip movie as Cheyenne sets out on an odd mission to avenge his late Jewish father by finding and killing his Holocaust camp tormentor.
Sorrentino is a dab hand at shooting artfully beautiful vistas with soaring camera pans, and the film is luscious to look at, but it’s sorely let down by his script. A seemingly ADD-affected quagmire, it picks up ideas and drops them just as quickly, like the young shopping mall singer who wants Cheyenne to produce his band’s debut album, or the Wall Street money man with an auto-erotic love of his pick-up truck.
The vignettes are amusing enough, and David Byrne’s cameo as himself is inspired (he also provides the soundtrack), but they don’t add up to much. Deeper musings on loneliness and belonging are lost among the prank-falling speed skaters and inexplicable car combustions.
As this overlong film stumbles aimlessly towards its rather implausible conclusion, it wanders into an overly simplistic view of the Nazis. A surprisingly average effort from the brains involved.
