Give Nicolas Cage a parking space and he’ll turn the asphalt into a stage to rival Broadway. The psychological thriller The Surfer, which was shown in the Midnight Screenings at the Cannes Film Festival this week, shows what this looks like. Cage provides a style in this One-man show of desperation, dehydration and masculine complexes based on a few cult films.
Nicolas Cage is tormented by a couple of dudebros in The Surfer
Said Australian car park sizzles over a public beach. It doesn’t look particularly spectacular, but the adjacent houses with sea and beach views have increased in value. The Australian-born “surfer” (Nicolas Cage) wants to buy one of them for millions.
As is widely known, Cage was born about a 15-hour flight from the Australian landmass. But there is more to the alienation from local tongues. The surfer hates his job. He has a wife who is divorcing and a son he cannot access. And he doesn’t look like a surfer either.
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Nicolas Cage in The Surfer
The house on the hill is intended to act as a nostalgic balm on the wounds of life’s crises. When he shows his son the Eden of his youth, he collides with a wall of muscle and bleached hair. It is a congregation by Patrick Swayzes from Dangerous Surf. Surfer bros of the highest order. Nip/Tuck surgeon Julian McMahon plays her hypermasculine order leader and her crucifix is the waxed hard foam on the next wave. Only locals are allowed to surf on the beachThe motto is that everyone else will be punished. Cage’s surfer doesn’t want to let that happen.
Nicolas Cage’s tour de force is definitely worth seeing
Cage’s character could simply drive away, but under the pressure of the dudebros, reason evaporates into the wind. So we watch large parts of the game, how the surfer loses first food, then water and increasingly his reason, while trying to get his board back. The beach trip turns into a paranoid nightmare involving everyone from the food vendor to the cop Locals maintaining the waverider conspiracy.
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Julian McMahon and Justin Rosniak in The Surfer
The psychedelic thriller by director Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium) and author Thomas Martin revives the atmosphere of cult films from the 60s and 70s. At the top of the list, alongside the Burt Lancaster fable The Swimmer, is the Australian classic Holidays in Hell (1971), in which a teacher sinks into the vortex of barbaric drinking rituals in a mining town. Instead of booze, the surfers execute worn-out wisdom about the Crisis of modern masculinity, against which only archaic harshness provides relief.
Cage rubs himself up in front of the camera, slurps out of puddles and throws rats around. Once again, he highlights his ability to spit out the most absurd lines with such fervor that you have to respect his heroes even in their lowest moments (The film’s quote reads “Eat the rat” and it calls for a GIF).
The rest of the film sells Cage’s enthusiasm for the game short and focuses too heavily on homage. In the end, the plot prevails over the mania. As if someone was afraid to look madness unprotected in the eye. But the trip to the beach is definitely worth it for Nicolas Cage’s tour de force.
The Surfer was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. The film has not yet been released in German cinemas.