This Must Be The Place

Deliberately misleading even in its title, which could have been "it must be the time," Sorrentino's latest film is a lesson in rallenty-life, a road-slow-movie of excellent quality.

"What gender is this carrot?" is the first question asked by a guy seen on TV in the resounding home of Cheyenne, a former rock dark star, with a face smeared with lipstick and powder, backcombed hair and very slow movements like a slightly senile old lady...

He has tried everything in life, especially pulled heroin because he can't stand needles, but he has never smoked because he remained a child and "children are not attracted to smoke."

He has no children but a mother wife who is a firefighter and a teenage friend who believes "violence is everywhere but doesn't always show up."

He lives with a trolley even when he goes around town and plays pelota in the empty swimming pool with his wife, who lets him win to make him "feel like a big stud"-he finds it more fun than swimming.... that's why he never filled it with water.

The theme of time is constantly recurring:

women fall in love if you give them time, it makes them feel secure, they don't know they are worth that much;

"we go too quickly from saying - I'll do this - to saying - that's how it was";

"it's not true that it's better late than never, late is late!".

" I will never have a cell phone," says Cheyenne, his slowness evidently not allowing him to have one.

He is a fragile artist, often as candid as a child, sweet and very patient, he has to bear lacerating guilt but he also knows that if you slow down death comes anyway as does the time for revenge.

After 30 years apart, his father, a Jew, locked up in concentration camps who dedicated his life to tracking down his executioner dies because "there are many ways to die, the worst is by staying alive."

Cheyenne will seek him out, find him and lead him to humiliation because "the inexorable beauty of revenge is perseverance."

A film in search of lost time through the journey of life made of anthological spaces, sublime cinematography, immense music of almost unique artistry; but also an exasperated search for almost obsessive extravagance and an excellent, ruthless eulogy of slowness.

An art film about love and death, departures and returns, inexorable spaces and times, waiting and illusion....

because " it is not true, but it is good that you tell me."

Sophisticated....