For his first English-language film, Il Divo director Paolo Sorrentino has not only pilfered the song’s title (sans the parentheses), but also brought in Byrne to provide both the soundtrack and a quirky cameo. However, the Talking Heads connection stops there, as the film’s plot focuses on Cheyenne (Sean Penn), a middle-aged rock star who is living out his reclusive later years in an Irish mansion. However, after slowly building up a number of character-portrait plot points – there’s a young goth in need of guidance, and a bereaved mother whose son took Cheyenne’s lyrics too seriously – the director performs a narrative about-face, sending the protagonist Stateside, to his father’s deathbed. There, he learns of his father’s life-long quest to confront a former SS officer, who persecuted him at Auschwitz. And so, stylistic gears audibly grinding, the film kicks into its second phase, where Cheyenne road-trips across America, searching for his prey, and discovering a little about himself and his former home country along the way. It is as thematically messy and intermittently corny (at one point Cheyenne sings a duet with a kid) as it is aesthetically beautiful. Sorrentino’s graceful camera movements and delicate framing may please the eye, but they’re poor compensation for the film’s lack of the wit, charm and insight found in David Lynch’s The Straight Story, or the work of the Coen Brothers. As always, Frances McDormand is a treat, bringing to her role all of the gusto and pluck that was evident in Fargo, but she is left behind far too early. Similarly, a fleeting, and funny, appearance from Judd Hirsch as a wizened, grouchy Nazi hunter is given little time to develop. Instead, we’re stuck with Penn for the duration. We’re also stuck with a very unfortunate score, which mostly consists of re-arrangements of the aforementioned Talking Heads tune. As we’ve already confirmed, this is a candidate for Desert Island Disc status, but ceaseless repetition of even a good melody is dangerous – and potentially fatal. Fortunately, at around the mid-point mark, Byrne himself turns up, performing a rather brilliant live rendition of the track, with a stage set that rises, rotates and glides over the heads of the band. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
