Paolo Sorrentino’s “This Must Be The Place”

Sean Penn in This Must Be The Place

***** Ultime notizie: This Must Be The Place, now playing in NYC and you can read my review – I loved it!

I can’t wait for “This Must Be The Place”, director Paolo Sorrentino’s first English language film. I love love loved his 2008 movie “Il Divo” and I know that he’s on the verge of something even bigger with this one, a movie in post production that stars Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, and Harry Dean Stanton.

This is pretty exciting – Sorrentino co-wrote the screenplay with another Italian, Umberto Contarello, who wrote one of my favorites, Luce Dei Miei Occhi. The cinematographer is – you guessed it – Italian, the wildly prolific Luca Bigazzi, who did Pane e Tulipani, La Siciliana, Il Divo, and A Casa Nostra, just to name a few. David Byrne did original music for the soundtrack along with Will Olham and he’s performing in the movie.

“This Must Be The Place” is the story of an aging rock star, played by Penn, who becomes fixated on pursuing the Nazi criminal who tormented his father in a concentration camp and is hiding in the US.

It’s being called one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2011, and – NO KIDDING! This one is bound to be a winner. Too bad it couldn’t have been made in Italy with Italian actors, but it doesn’t sound like anybody’s selling out. Nicola Giuliano from Indigo Films said, We gave making the change a lot of thought: a film made in English could widen our market. It’s not a American project, it’s absolutely Italian and has attracted a star like Sean Penn. I want to underscore the independence of the project.

And from the lips of Paolo Sorrentino: Making a film here (in the US) is no different from making one in Italy, so I want to reassure everybody that is nervous about it. The film is born from my reconciliation with my adolescence and the passion I had for the Talking Heads. ( “This Must Be The Place” is the name of one of their songs) In fact I was able to convince David Byrne to do the screenplay. The film moves in three directions: the irony of Sean Penn’s character and what happens in the story itself, very intimate, or rather the lack of rapport between father and son, and the Holocaust, but without wanting to give a routine answer to that horror. However, unlike my other films and despite the theme, there’s no mystery this time: there is joy.

At least that’s what I think they said. My Italian’s kind of bad, but I think it’s close. If you want to translate for yourself click here.

No matter what, this Italian baby will just happen to be born in the US – but it’s still Italian.