[star rating=”0.5″]
THE LAST FACE. Directed by Sean Penn, with Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem.
Review: MEGAN FURNISS
It was impossible to go to this movie with an open mind. Any tiny bit of research brought up the most terrible, scathing reviews. Even the relatively forgiving IMDB rates it a 3.1 out of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it an even lower 2.4 out of 10.
Some of the reviews describe The Last Face as war porn. The Guardian said, “African conflict is an aphrodisiac for white people”. And it only gets worse. “African suffering as a backdrop for romance, a white love story in a black war zone. Not all right,” said the Evening Standard. The audience at Cannes ‘guffawed’ at the premier.
It wasn’t only the subject matter that got a hammering. The performances were slammed, the structure, plot and ending were shredded, the directing and editing dismissed, and Sean Penn’s own blundering politics were brought back into the limelight.
So, off I went to see how bad it really was. The Last Face is bad. Very, agonisingly, uncomfortably bad. It is everything the famous critics said it is. And worse.
It really is horrible
Two aid worker doctors (Theron and Bardem) fall in love in between slaughters in Libya. The accusations of war porn are reinforced after every attack, with dead children at every turn, buckets of blood, bodies burnt, and a particularly hideous moment where intestines have been dragged from the body of a dead child and wrapped like a fence across two village trees. And that’s just the backdrop. HIV AIDS makes a guest appearance to create conflict and a momentary love triangle. Cape Town is used like a European style retreat for the tormented lovers (and a ridiculous opportunity to let Charlize’s character speak Afrikaans to a totally miscast Denise Newman). It is horrible.
Charlize’s character gets the worst possible treatment, with flashbacks that over explain her idealised relationship with her father, weird voice over sequences that over explain her inner thoughts, an incomprehensible series of scenes in Geneva, flashbacks to the relationship that included her soft blonde hair blowing in the wind, and a trite and tearful speech at a blue lit benefit concert in Cape Town’s City Hall. But the worst thing for me about Charlize was how I was completely irritated every time she opened her mouth, because her South African accent was so fake. How is that even possible?
All about revenge?
Javier Bardem has a terrible time of it too, trying to convince us of his feelings with absolutely nothing to work off; since none of the other characters, even the one played by the usually magnificent Jean Reno, have actual characters. The appearance of South African actors like Fiona Ramsey and Tina Jaxa only made me squirm more.
A creeping feeling came over me as I watched an irrelevant ladybird climb up a curtain for the second time, to violin music. This movie was Sean Penn’s revenge on a dying relationship. He wanted Charlize (his then girlfriend) to crash and burn. He wanted it to be about the thing it wasn’t about. Sean Penn, who directed The Crossing Guard with such alarming sensitivity, could not have been unconscious about what he was making here.
Everything they say about this movie is true. It is totally inappropriate, embarrassing and terribly, horribly bad. Nothing can save it.
WS
