Shadows on the Wall | The Surfer

The Surfer

dir Lorcan Finnegan
scr Thomas Martin
prd Leonora Darby, James Harris, Robert Connolly, James Grandison, Brunella Cocchiglia
with Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim, Finn Little, Justin Rosniak, Rahel Romahn, Miranda Tapsell, Adam Sollis, Michael Abercromby, Alexander Bertrand, Rory O'Keeffe, Rhys James
release US 2.May.25,
UK 9.May.25, Aus 15.Jun.25
24/Australia 1h39

CANNES FILM FEST

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Playing out like a fever dream, this Australian thriller oozes with 1970s-style nuttiness, from imagery that undulates in the sunshine to a florid central character who couldn't be played by anyone other than Nicolas Cage. Irish director Lorcan Finnegan leans into the churning emotions, creating sequences that are funny, terrifying, revolting and just plain bonkers. And there are also remarkably vivid underlying ideas about identity, personal history and belonging.

Successful in business if not in marriage, a man (Cage) returns to the beach where he grew up to take his teen son (Little) surfing. But a violent local wave-riding gang led by Scally (McMahon) won't let them in the water. Later, the man returns alone and is again tormented by the surfers as he tries to protect a homeless man (Cassim) from harm. And he begins to lose everything he has, item by item. Meanwhile, he's negotiating the purchase of his childhood beach home, but that's becoming less likely as he descends into madness.

This unnamed man's descent into wild-eyed mania is relentless, and of course Cage is well up to the challenge, unravelling from a confident alpha male into a yammering nutcase. Even so, he remains laser focussed on two things slipping from his grasp: buying this house and surfing this beach. Each scene erupts with astonishing details. The surfers are revealed as a cult around Scally, complete with baptisms and branding. Various critters emerge from the foliage. And the people who turn up in this little parking lot have big personalities.

As a result, the actors have a lot to play with, and it's fascinating to see McMahon maintain such a cool exterior opposite Cage's escalating hysteria. There's also an unhelpful local cop (Rosniak), a friendly photographer (Tapsell), the man's slippery estate agent (Romahn) and a downright evil barista (Sollis). While all of these people are more than a little cartoonish, they feed into the film's frothy atmospherics, with saturated colours and flickering flashbacks.

Most intriguing is the way characters begin to blur along the way. The central figure and the homeless man gradually swap places, adding textures from father-son dynamics and their past experiences with death. So the swirling final sequence feels like it might be an outrageous flurry of confused identity and perspective. Enjoyably, this is the kind of movie that leaves itself open to interpretation, and it also gets us thinking about where we come from and where we want to go.

themes, language, violence 1.May.25

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