‘Deliciously bonkers’: Aussie film starring Nicolas Cage makes a splash at Cannes
By Garry Maddox
An Australian film starring Nicolas Cage as a surfer whose life unravels after he returns to his beachside home town has been warmly received at a midnight debut at the Cannes Film Festival.
Irish director Lorcan Finnegan’s The Surfer, which was shot near Margaret River in Western Australia, reportedly had Cage fans screaming and bellowing as he entered the cinema in his first appearance at the festival since Wild at Heart won the Palme d’Or in 1990.
Nicolas Cage in The Surfer.Credit: Stan
Vulture called the film “a deliciously bonkers, sunburnt psychological-thriller-slash-dark comedy about a man who just wants to surf, and will risk everything he has to do it�.
While noting The Surfer had some surprising moments of political and emotional depth, it said the film was “primarily operating on a ’70s-B-movie wavelength, full of psychedelic slow-zooms, woozy daydream sequences and ominous flashbacks, winks to New Wave Australian cinema, and another perfectly wild-eyed performance from Cage to add to his pantheon of such performances�.
Finnegan (Vivarium) cast Cage as an Australian who moved to California when he was a teenager – losing his accent – and now wants to re-establish his roots in his idyllic home town after the breakdown of his marriage. Finn Little plays his teenage son, with Julian McMahon as the surf gang’s leader, Justin Rosniak as a cop and Rahel Romahn as a real estate agent.
Cage, his wife, Riko Shibata, and their daughter August stayed in a beachfront home owned by former pro surfer Taj Burrow and his wife, Rebecca, in Yallingup, south of Perth, during the shoot.
Lorcan Finnegan (left), Nicolas Cage and actor Alexander Bertrand at The Surfer world premiere in Cannes.Credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
IndieWire said The Surfer, which will get an Australian cinema release before streaming on Stan (owned by Nine Entertainment, which also owns this masthead), was “drenched in nods to New Wave Australian cinema of the 1970s�. It noted that some of the key films of this era were made by directors who, like Finnegan, were outsiders looking in on the country’s culture and history, including Canadian Ted Kotcheff (Wake in Fright) and Englishman Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout).
Variety described The Surfer as smart programming for a midnight session at the festival: “It really is a midnight movie – the kind of trippy slapdash comic nightmare where the only way to watch it is to sit back and ‘go with it’.�
The Hollywood Reporter called it a sly psychological thriller with Cage delivering a “wackadoodle, OTT� performance.
“Hogging the spotlight, the way we love to watch him work, he goes to town with the surfer’s mental unzipping as the character becomes at odds not just with [local surf gang] the Bay Boys but the heat, dehydration and hunger, and the local fauna themselves,� its review read.
Deadline Hollywood thought that Cage as a surfer dude was unlikely casting, “but who cares?�
“The Surfer is an object lesson in how to make a film economically by using a single location, a bunch of surfing extras and some stock footage of lizards. Which is the grind house ethic at work, for sure.�