In This Must Be The Place, Sean Penn plays an aging Robert Smith-modelled rock star who travels to America to hunt down his father’s Nazi tormenter.
Even with that pitch, there’s so much wrong with Paolo Sorrentino’s latest effort, both tonally and thematically, and so it comes as no surprise that many things about the picture do not work. What is a huge surprise however, is that even more things do, and beautifully.
As one-time ‘80s glam rocker Cheyenne, Penn is an odd, depressive delight. With mannerisms more often like a downer Ozzie Osbourne than Smith, everything from his halting speech, childish wide-eyed gaze, unbearably slow movements and the most delayed yet infectious high-pitched giggle ever uttered is charmingly odd but never forced. And as Cheyenne attempts to set up his teenage confidante (a wonderfully sensitive Eve Hewson) and laughs with his wife (Frances McDormand) Penn oozes a warmth and innocence that’s impossible not to surrender to.
But there’s something devastatingly lonely about the depressive Cheyenne too, who spends his time pottering around a landmark-pocked Dublin. So when his father dies after years of unsuccessfully trying to seek revenge on one of the Nazi officers he encountered in the camps, Cheyenne’s decision to travel to America to continue the search is both absurd and understandable; an extreme and unlikely undertaking by a man in desperate need for meaning.
There is a discord between the Dublin and American storylines, while a scene towards the end of the picture very unsuccessfully straddles a line between catharsis and utter cruelty, showing that Sorrentino’s Nazi hunt may be one heavy-footed step too far for this often surreal and consistently witty character study.
But with a gorgeous score from David Byrne whose performance of the title-track proves a wonderful highlight, a script littered with delicious oddities and a strikingly sentimental turn from Penn; this is the place for anyone ready to go on a one-of-a kind, hilarious, heart-breaking and utterly unique road-trip.