Identity and belonging, nostalgia and rebirth in the psychological thriller “The Surfer” by the Irish director Lorcan Finneganat the Taormina Film Festival on the evening of July 17 – after the official presentation in Cannes – and presented to the press yesterday. Protagonist Nicholas Cage (also co-producer), who for “serious family reasons” could not be present at the event to collect the Cariddi d’Oro for Lifetime Achievement, only a video message of apologies. “The family reasons” the actor refers to concern his son Weston Coppola Cage, 33 years old, who suffers from mental disorders and drug addictions and who was arrested and then released in Los Angeles for punching two people.
Written by Thomas Martinthe film sees the American actor in the role of a nameless man who returns to his hometown, on an Australian beach, after many years spent in California. Once there, he is humiliated in front of his teenage son (Finn Little) by a group of local surfers, and engages in a conflict with them that will lead him to lose control of himself. The plot develops between past and present, and, in between, nostalgia, a sense of identity, belonging. The atmospheres and the technology used for filming are also consistent with the theme. “I have always been very fascinated by the atmosphere of the ’60s and ’70s and I was interested in the connection with the Australian New Wave of cinema,” said the director. With Thomas we referred to Peter Weir’s early films like “The Last Wave”, as well as to “The Naked Man” by Frank Perry with Burt Lancaster”. It was interesting to show how the protagonist was gripped by nostalgia for the place and his bond of identity with the place itself. We made it a place of memory through music and colors, while trying to intertwine it with modern technologies such as smartphones». A job also done in terms of aesthetics and technique: «We used the Alexa 35 and vintage lenses, uniting past and present also in the instrumentation». “The Surfer” will be released soon in Italy with IIF.
On the thread of memory too “Touch” by Icelandic Baltasar Kormákurwhich last night at the Teatro Antico moved everyone with the delicacy of the story, on timeless bonds, those “forever”. Inspired by the novel of the same name by Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson (unreleased in Italy), who collaborated on the screenplay with the director, the film tells the physical and spiritual journey of Kristòfer (Egill Ólafsson), a widower who, after receiving a diagnosis of early-stage dementia, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, leaves his home in Reykjavik to solve the greatest mystery of his life: tracking down Miko (Koki Kimura), the Japanese girl he fell in love with 50 years earlier, during his studies in London, who disappeared at the height of their intense love affair. The new mission will be to find her, before the progression of the disease makes the memory of her disappear forever.
At the festival, the director with his son Pàlmi, who played Kristòfer as a young man. “Memory loss on certain things is quite normal when you reach 50-60 years of age – he said – but where the pathology intervenes it becomes a serious matter. In the case of our protagonist, the disease is just beginning, it has not yet affected his behavior, and it is precisely this awareness that acts as a push, to give an answer to a traumatic event from the past, left pending. I interpreted his search as a need to close a circle, a search for meaning more than for love, even if the two things coincide”. It is something that will bring him back to the habits of his youth, before the trauma, and therefore in itself a viaticum to the disease. A coincidence that makes you think: “Egill, who plays Kristòfer the elderly, had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s+, which leads to Alzheimer’s. We decided to have him play this role anyway”. “Touch” will be in theaters from August 29 with Universal Pictures Italia.
