Paolo Sorrentino 2011 Italy/Ireland
A few weeks ago, around New Year, I saw Paolo Sorrentino's current film The Great Beauty and, in its two hours of stupendous visuals and troubled human pageantry, it surpassed anything I've seen in the past year. This Must Be The Place is Sorrentino's previous feature and, as yet, his only one in the English language, and it's awful...ok, maybe that's a little harsh but it's pretty bad. At first it seems like an interesting if bizarre idea - Sean Penn dressed up like Robert Smith from The Cure hunting for the Nazi oppressors of his father - but it never really gets going and Penn doesn't do much more than adopt a high-pitched mumble and act like he's on temazepam. Frances McDormand tries hard as his happy-go-lucky wife but ultimately loses the battle with an underwritten part. After a while David Byrne wanders in, playing himself, for no other reason than because he provided the title. Later, a visit to Cheyenne's (Penn) former teacher aims for comedy but falls flat, her "Do you want to kill me?" only making us hope his answer is yes so something will happen. A waitress tries to seduce him despite him being about as alluring as Swarfega, he hallucinates a man with a pencil moustache standing on a trailer, it all makes very little sense; a jumbled plethora of arse that even the wonderful Harry Dean Stanton (87 and still acting) can't save, not least because he disappears after 2 minutes and 40 seconds, in the end rendered as pointless as everything else in a film that's only achievement is that if Cheyenne is depressed at the start we're right there with him by the end.
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