Wig of the week: This Must Be the Place

I am not a member of the Sean Penn fan club. His performances are too attention-seeking. It’s no different this time, except that his theatricality is at least amusing. The star of Milk and Casualties of War plays a retired Goth rocker who could live comfortably off his royalties but still decides to dress the part every day: a hairdo copied from a bird’s nest, jet-black clothes, black mascara, red lips, and a frown. It’s hard not to chortle when you hear his high, shaky voice. Cheyenne is long past caring about the strange looks and stares. Fairly quickly, you start feeling sorry for the eccentric man. The film clearly bears the director’s hallmarks, just like Il Divo did: daring camera angles, calculated camera movements, carefully composed scenes. He’s good. Strangely – and unfortunately – enough, he has not invested his talent in a story that is in any way out of the ordinary. His father’s death forces Cheyenne to take a boat from Ireland to New York. There he finds a new goal in life: finding the Nazi who tortured his father in a concentration camp. At a leisurely pace, he travels right across America, finally ready to take some responsibility. Sigh, what is the moral of this story? Surely not that Goths never grow out of adolescence? This Must Be the Place is worth watching up to the fantastic scene with David Byrne. That’s about halfway through.

This Must Be the Place ••
IT, FR, IE, 2010, dir.: Paolo Sorrentino, act.: Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, 120 min.