NZIFF 2012 Review: ‘This Must Be The Place’

This is the strangest cross-country road trip I’ve seen on film. It doesn’t entirely work, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

Sean Penn has played a lot of different characters over the years, but never one quite as strange as this. As Cheyenne, a former glam-rock star who is part Ozzy Osborne, part Robert Smith, he gets to wear make-up, jewellery and a lot of tight, black clothing. He lives on a magnificent estate in Ireland with his firefighter wife. A more unlikely couple you couldn’t imagine, but they seem truly in love despite their very obvious differences.

Cheyenne’s blissfully surreal life ends when he receives a phone call telling him his father is dying. Back to the States for the first time in 20 years, he paints a striking figure in this largely Jewish neighborhood, and looks uncomfortably out of place in the home he grew up in. Yet when he sees his father’s body, he is affected by it. So much so, that he decides to continue his father’s hunt for a Nazi war criminal.

This film is a chameleon. Penn is outstanding. He is in almost every frame, and while I couldn’t quite believe 100% in his character, he was never less than compelling. But director Sorrentino has a quirky visual style that is as often painfully self-indulgent as it is spot on. The film’s pacing is all screwed up – the first act drags on far longer than necessary to introduce the characters, then zips away to an entirely other place without ever really returning to where it began.

I can’t really put my finger on what was off, but the film left me with an unsettled feeling that stayed with me even after leaving the theatre. Despite this I enjoyed this film enormously, and feel that it would definitely benefit from a second viewing.

It’s one of those films that’s like a car crash: a mess, but utterly compelling.

7.5/10