Don’t miss Nicolas Cage in one of his most complex roles yet

Nicolas Cage brings his manic energy to this idiosyncratic thriller in which NIMBYism is taken to the extreme. There are times, under the unblinking Australian sun, where it looks like his head is about to explode.

Nicolas Cage in The Surfer.

99 minutes

99 minutes

In cinemas

★★★½

How low can you go? That’s the question Nicolas Cage’s unnamed character asks himself, and us, in the impressive The Surfer, an Australian-Irish co-production that was filmed in Western Australia.

Cage, who won an Oscar a century ago for Mike Figgis’s Leaving Las Vegas, is one of the most interesting ­actors working today.

He brings his manic energy to this idiosyncratic thriller in which NIMBYism is taken to the extreme. There are times, under the unblinking Australian sun, where it looks like his head is about to explode.

He is strongly supported by Australian actor Julian McMahon in one of the most complex roles he has taken. The film is directed by Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan (his Vivarium did well at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival) and written by Irish screenwriter Thomas Martin (the 2017 television series Tin Star).

As Cage is a man with no name, we will call him The Surfer. We first meet him, and his teenage son Charlie (Finn Little), as they head to the beach, boards under their arms, in the fictional town of Lunar Bay. The first surfer they pass tells them to “F..k off”. The second warns them, “Don’t live here, don’t surf here”.

The Surfer, as they will come to learn, is not a man to be taken lightly. However his son is intimidated so they back off to the car park. That’s where The Surfer has parked his Lexus and, as it turns out, this will be his home for the foreseeable future. He changes from wetsuit to linen suit.

The Surfer did live in Lunar Bay, or so he says. It’s difficult to know what to believe. There are moments that may be memories or may be hallucinations.

When he was 15 his father died, in dubious circumstances, and he and his mother moved to California. Which is the explanation for why The Surfer sounds not Australian but like, well, Nicolas Cage.

Now he wants to buy a home there and reunite with his estranged wife. And not just any home but, he says, the one he grew up in. He’s offered $1.6m but there’s a counter offer of $1.7m so he needs to raise $100,000 quickly. He appears to work in the finance-investment business.

It’s all perplexing in a delightful, engaging way. He lives in his car, doesn’t drink enough water, has no food (until he does in one of the how low moments) and washes in the stinking public toilets. His phone dies and he is harassed by the neighbourhood surfers and the unfriendly local police officer (Justin Rosniak).

There’s an older man (a scene-stealing Nic Cassim) also living in his car. His son was a teenage surfing sensation. This old man, dismissed by all, will become important. He owns a pistol.

As is characteristic of foreign films made in Australia, the stinging, biting, piss-off-back-home wildlife has regular cameo appearances. The laughing kookaburra is a highlight, but one of the best scenes, shown in parallel with another low moment for The Surfer, involves an echidna, one of “Australia’s groundskeepers”, as Tom ­Keneally describes them.

It’s when The Surfer meets the handsome leader of the local surf gang, Scally (McMahon), that this film moves into fascinating psychological terrain. Scally’s background, like The Surfer’s, is hard to pin down. What is certain is that he’s more than a local surfer. “Every man has a f..king animal in him,’’ he tells his crew. And he counsels The Surfer: “Before you can surf, you must suffer.”

And suffer he does. Does he then surf? That remains to be seen. As The Surfer tells his son, waves build “to a breaking point – you either surf it or you wipe out”.

I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable this film is. Cage is always a pleasure to watch, but it’s more than that. The supporting cast are excellent and it’s well written, directed and filmed. In short, it’s a whole lot of weird and crazy fun headed by a weird and crazy actor who only wants to ride the waves.

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Monsieur Aznavour (M)

133 minutes
French language with English subtitles
In cinemas
★★★

“Love songs are for handsome men.” So a Parisian bar owner tells young French-Armenian singer-songwriter Charles Aznavour (an outstanding Tahar Rahim) early in the musical biopic Monsieur Aznavour.

The changes Aznavour (1924-2018) made to croon love songs included a nose job. This film is at its most captivating as an examination of an artist who will do whatever it takes to make it.

He puts it bluntly enough himself. “If I must neglect everything to succeed, I will.” His pianist friend and accompanist, Pierre Rocke (an excellent Bastien Bouillon), warns him: “Your ambition will cost you everything.”

Whether Pierre is right is difficult to know. Aznavour, the child of Armenian immigrants, became rich, famous and enigmatic. He was called France’s Frank Sinatra (who has an entertaining cameo role, played by British actor Rupert Wynne-James). Yet in this telling he is never happy.

Rahim’s brilliant song-dance-romance-distance performance brings this out in every scene.

“It can’t be that hard to write two verses and a chorus,” Aznavour says when someone suggests he stop doing covers. And it isn’t hard, but Aznavour strives incessantly for something he feels is out of reach. A mansion on the Riveria? Unhappy. And so on.

He comes across as quite an unpleasant man, especially to his wives (he was thrice married), lovers and children. That French filmmakers paint a French showbiz legend in such a light is interesting. It takes the movie beyond the standard hits-and-flops musical life.

The film is written and directed by Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade (the stage name of French poet and songwriter Fabien Marsaud). They deftly parallel moments in Aznavour’s life with his best-known songs.

The absolute highlight is Marie-Julie Baup’s withering performance as French superstar Edith Piaf (1915-63), who took Aznavour under her wing. The moment she asks him to three-step waltz with her at a drinks party in her Paris apartment is spellbinding. “He’s the real thing,” she announces.

Aznavour becomes Piaf’s curtain raiser. Yet the collaboration comes at a cost.

Aznavour’s sister Aida (Camille Moutawakil), with whom he is close, describes her as a tyrant. When he replies “It’s Edith Piaf!”, she responds: “And you’re Charles Aznavour!”

Inside himself, Aznavour believes that from the beginning. The childhood scenes of him taking the stage for the first time are perhaps the only time he looks happy. But in this thought-provoking account of his long and successful life, what niggles at him is whether other people believe it, too.