Actor daughter of Bono joined Seán Penn at premiere of ‘This must be the place’ which was filmed in Dublin
SEAN PENN, furrowed American star, and Eve Hewson, actor daughter of Bono, trod the Cannes red carpet last night before the premiere of the delightfully odd This Must Be The Place.
Co-produced by Element Pictures, an Irish firm, and supported by the Irish Film Board, Paolo Sorrentino’s picture concerns a retired American rock star who, while vegetating in Dublin, belatedly decides to address his growing sense of boredom.
Speaking at a press conference, Penn spoke warmly of his time working in the Irish capital. "I've spent a lot of time in Dublin in the past," he said in reply to a question from The Irish Times. "And it's always been quite a spunky city. It's suffering a tremendous recession. The streets are alive two days a week. It's a picture of a problem that's been spinning around the world. But we had a great time. Because Ireland's greatest natural resource is after all the Irish. We don't get along with two kinds of people: blacks and whites."
Penn met Sorrentino at the 2008 festival when, as chairman of the judging panel, the actor was instrumental in awarding Il Divo, the Italian director's study of politician Giulio Andreotti, the Prix du Jury.
“It was at the group photograph at the end that I talked to him,” Penn said.
“I think I said to him: ‘Any time, Anywhere’.”
The film must have had some resonances for Eve Hewson. Now 19, the actor plays a girl who makes efforts to shake the protagonist out of his torpor.
She, too, has spent time in a mansion with a middle-aged rock star. When prompted, however, Hewson concisely refused to draw any comparisons.
Did the story ring any bells? “No bells,” she said firmly.
This must be the placeis in competition for the Palme d'Or with such films as Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life,Lars Von Trier's Melancholiaand Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin. One of the surprise favourites for the award, however, is a black-and-white, silent pastiche of vintage cinema entitled The Artist.Were Michel Hazanavicius's film to triumph tomorrow night it would be the first silent film to take Cannes's top prize.
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE ****
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino Starring Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch, Eve Hewson, Kerry Condon, Harry Dean Stanton, Simon Delaney
Over the last few decades, Sean Penn has established an unwelcome reputation as a scenery chewer. But, with his cautious Oscar-winning turn in Milkand now, a poignant performance in this proudly weird new film from Paolo Sorrentino, the American actor appears to be back on the right track. To borrow a construction often used glibly on promotional material, this is Sean Penn as you've never seen him.
Penn plays Cheyenne, an American gloom rocker who, having seen his music drive a few young people to suicide, now lives in docile retirement with his long-suffering wife (Frances McDormand) in an elaborate Dublin mansion. Some afternoons, he watches Jamie Oliver on the telly. When feeling more energetic, he plays sweaty handball in an empty swimming pool. His life finally gets shaken up when, after attending his Jewish father’s funeral in New York, he decides to track down the elderly Nazi who tormented the late parent in a concentration camp.
The scenes in Dublin make ingenious use of imposing landmarks, both old and new. The Aviva stadium, filmed when still fresh from its box, looms imposingly over the action in several scenes.
This wryly funny, gently surreal picture is, however, all about the character of Cheyenne. With his hair teased into a Goth bush, speaking in a voice that sounds like a cross between Michael Jackson and Andy Warhol, Cheyenne could easily have been presented as a figure of fun. There are certainly jokes at his expense. But Penn manages to make something fleshy and conflicted from this unlikely material. This is a decent man – an ordinary man, even – propelled into eccentricity by the unhappy pressures of fame.
Sorrentino, the Italian director of
Il Divo
and
The Family Friend,
fills the film with elaborate flourishes – including a performance by David Byrne of the song that gives the film its title – but, more than anything else,
This Must be the Place
works as a surprisingly nuanced character study. One of a kind.
