Cannes 2011 review: This Must Be the Place

For his technique, ambition and reach, 40-year-old Italian director Paolo Sorrentino is justifiably considered an emerging master of modern cinema, crucially nurtured here at Cannes. His new English-language film, This Must Be the Place – starring Sean Penn as Cheyenne, a retired goth rocker living in Dublin – has superbly elegant and distinctive forms: looming camera movements, bursts of pop, deadpan comedy, quasi-hallucinatory perspective lines in landscapes in which singular figures look vulnerably isolated. There's an awful lot to enjoy here and yet I couldn't help feeling that, when Cheyenne leaves Ireland to journey into the classic American midwest on a mission to find the fugitive Nazi who tormented his father in the camps, the film becomes derivative and Wim Wenders-ish. And a final twist-reveal gestures at some kind of equivalence between the suffering of Jews and their Nazi captors. Now, perhaps it's the lingering unease that Lars von Trier has left behind him here at the festival, but I found that a slightly uncomfortable conceit.

Sean Penn is undoubtedly funny as Cheyenne, still in the Robert Smith Cure get-up after all these years, the only concession to middle age being the reading glasses on a chain around his neck. His quavery campy voice is Truman Capote meets Boy George meets Quentin Crisp. He is living on his royalties in a mansion, watching Jamie Oliver on the TV and wondering whether to sell his Tesco shares. For all Brits, the sound of "Tesco" on Sean Penn's lips is a surreal joy. He has a rather Stella Street-ish existence, walking through the town with his trolley for the weekly shop, and blandly accepting the double-takes and stares. His American wife (Frances McDormand) is contentedly employed as a firefighter in Dublin.

His life takes a leftfield lurch on hearing that his father is dying. A boat journey to New York ensues (he doesn't like flying) and Cheyenne is reunited with his observant Jewish family, and accepts a mission to find the Nazi who persecuted his father in Auschwitz, for which he has the help of a tough Nazi-hunter, nicely played by Judd Hirsch.

Cheyenne's American odyssey reaches its peak with a wonderful cameo from David Byrne, who plays This Must Be the Place in concert and has a great scene with Penn. Getting Byrne in front of the camera was clearly a labour of pure fan-love for Sorrentino.

Yet I couldn't help wonder how the movie would have looked if it had been simply about Cheyenne coming back to see his family and facing his personal (and musical) demons. For me, the Holocaust material was not entirely successful, though certainly transmitted with absolute certainty and sincerity. This Must Be the Place is not my favourite of Sorrentino's films, but it certainly deserved inclusion at Cannes, and deserves to be watched for the glorious Byrne moments alone.