This Must Be The Place review
A complete disaster. “This Must Be The Place,” which received mixed reviews when it premiered at Cannes, had been one of the films I was most curious about this year. Though there’s still no U.S. release date set, I was able to see it last week where it was in wide release in Paris. In the film Penn plays an almost catatonically depressed (another one!) retired rock star who sets out on a road trip through America to find a hiding Nazi war criminal who imprisoned his father during WWII. Yeah, it’s another one of those. He leaves behind his (completely normal) firefighter wife Frances McDormand and sets off for adventure. So where does the film go wrong? Pretty much everywhere it can.
To trace why I wanted to see this movie in the first place is to go back to Italian writer/director Paolo Sorrentino’s last film, “Il Divo” a Fellini-meets-Scorsese account of Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. It was funny, strange and one of my favorite films of 2009. But like so many foreign auteurs, the transition to English language film is not a smooth one. For starters, Penn’s performance is all whispers and giggles and it’s just painful to watch for nearly 2 hours. But I can’t completely blame Penn for trying something so out there, I have to blame co-writer/director Sorrentino for not stepping in and suggesting adding some range to the performance. The film has endless (supposedly comedic) shots of Penn’s character looking out of place in whatever environment he happens to be in but this also grows old fast.
The overwrought final act, which makes it clear the film has things to say about growing up, dealing with fame and uh, Nazi war crimes, elevates the film to a rarefied company of spectacularly bad movies. In hindsight that image of Penn dressed as a Robert Smith-like rocker complete with lipstick and wigged out hair should have been sufficient warning but I just wanted to believe a movie with a premise this outlandish could actually succeed. Unfortunately it was too crazy to be anything other than a complete mess for both Penn and director Sorrentino. The film is so strange and so bad that I can only imagine it’ll turn into a cult oddity at some point. Personally I can’t wait for it to be released in the U.S. just so I can read the sure-to-be-hilarious Videogum review.
