This Must Be The Place (15.)
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino.
Starring Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch, Eve Hewson, Harry Dean Stanton and David Byrne. 117 mins.
Italian Paolo Sorrentino is potentially one of the most exciting film makers on the planet but his films all follow the same pattern: he creates a freakshow central character and then encases him in an airtight cordon of striking tableaux, montages and flashes back and forward.
For his first English language movie he has slackened the visual stranglehold and let just a little air into his creation but he’s kept the freakshow. Sean Penn is Cheyenne, a retired rock star who dresses like The Cure’s Robert Smith – eyeliner, lipstick, teased up hair and head-to-toe black outfits – and has a frail squeaky Tiny Tim speaking voice. A figure of fun to the locals he has both a childlike vulnerability and caustic defiance that makes him part Edward Scissorhands, part Naked Civil Servant.
As the film opens he is living a millionaire hobo existence in his giant mansion and pottering around the streets of Dublin. After half an hour of this he is suddenly uprooted to the States and we shift into road movie mode as he embarks on a cross country hunt for a Nazi war criminal. Most European directors of esteem have a go at their big American movie and those that avoid the cities come up with this same view of it as a vast, desolate landscape dotted at regular intervals with eccentrics and strangeness.
The film wants to avoid clichéd offbeatness but replaces it with a rather forced randomness. For example Frances McDormand is Cheyenne’s resolutely down-to-earth, fire-fighter wife of many years and their union never moves beyond feeling like a stunt. At various points through the film it seems like the writers have come up with six offbeat choices and thrown a dice to see which one they’d go with. It’s all a bit wacky, albeit subdued wacky.
As with Sorrentino’s previous film there is a sense that a lot of it is just there for show, but what show. Halfway through David Byrne turns up to perform the title tune and his performance is captured in one joyously imaginative shot that is as thrilling and magical as anything you will see in the cinema all year. I would love Sorrentino to make a film I could love as simply and completely as those four minutes.
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino.
Starring Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch, Eve Hewson, Harry Dean Stanton and David Byrne. 117 mins.
Italian Paolo Sorrentino is potentially one of the most exciting film makers on the planet but his films all follow the same pattern: he creates a freakshow central character and then encases him in an airtight cordon of striking tableaux, montages and flashes back and forward.
For his first English language movie he has slackened the visual stranglehold and let just a little air into his creation but he’s kept the freakshow. Sean Penn is Cheyenne, a retired rock star who dresses like The Cure’s Robert Smith – eyeliner, lipstick, teased up hair and head-to-toe black outfits – and has a frail squeaky Tiny Tim speaking voice. A figure of fun to the locals he has both a childlike vulnerability and caustic defiance that makes him part Edward Scissorhands, part Naked Civil Servant.
As the film opens he is living a millionaire hobo existence in his giant mansion and pottering around the streets of Dublin. After half an hour of this he is suddenly uprooted to the States and we shift into road movie mode as he embarks on a cross country hunt for a Nazi war criminal. Most European directors of esteem have a go at their big American movie and those that avoid the cities come up with this same view of it as a vast, desolate landscape dotted at regular intervals with eccentrics and strangeness.
The film wants to avoid clichéd offbeatness but replaces it with a rather forced randomness. For example Frances McDormand is Cheyenne’s resolutely down-to-earth, fire-fighter wife of many years and their union never moves beyond feeling like a stunt. At various points through the film it seems like the writers have come up with six offbeat choices and thrown a dice to see which one they’d go with. It’s all a bit wacky, albeit subdued wacky.
As with Sorrentino’s previous film there is a sense that a lot of it is just there for show, but what show. Halfway through David Byrne turns up to perform the title tune and his performance is captured in one joyously imaginative shot that is as thrilling and magical as anything you will see in the cinema all year. I would love Sorrentino to make a film I could love as simply and completely as those four minutes.
