ADVICE FROM THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
How many directors have dreamed of orchestrating the return with fanfare of Nicolas Cage, the unforgettable actor of Peggy Sue got married by Francis Ford Coppola, Sailor and Lula by David Lynch, Turn / face by John Woo, Snake Eyes by Brian De Palma? The marvelous existential gambler – women, cars, roles and castles in shambles – seemed plunged since the mid-2000s into a kind of endless artistic purgatory.
It will be said that Michael Sarnoski, thanks to an endearing and finely conducted first feature film, won this challenge. If not with fanfare, at least in intelligence and sensitivity. Two successful decisions should be noted in this regard. The first is to imagine a story that puts in abyss the hole from which the cuckoo Cage will emerge. The second is to start a story of revenge, thriller or western type (a killer in the car park comes out of retirement to rebuild his health on a mountain of corpses), but to cook it quite differently.
It all begins in the sumptuous, autumnal nature of a forest near Portland, in the far west of Oregon. There, retired with a sow in a rotten hut, without a shower or a telephone, his shaggy gray hair, in rags and mittens, mutic, Rob (Cage, not recognizable at first glance) works as a truffle hunter. Ghetto blaster from which emanates, via a cassette, the laughter of a woman. Antique truck covered with tarpaulin. Sow bench at the foot of her bed. We tell ourselves that a serious existential shock drove him, a long time ago, into this retreat. One would be tempted to leave him to his hermitic atonement if, in the middle of the night, masked assailants did not break his face and go away having captured the animal.
Strange treasure hunt
Unscrupulous competitors? Pathological jealous? Old acquaintances returned to settle a checking account since their previous life? Knowing almost nothing of the character’s present or past, the viewer gets lost in conjecture. And you know – O readers! – how auspicious it is, for the spectator that you could become, to get lost in conjectures! Well arranged by his night, Rob opens it to his wholesaler the next day, a certain young Amir, a dandy who wears handsome, drives in a bright yellow Chevrolet Camaro coupe, and brings him some cans in exchange for a big Tupperware filled with truffles. .
It is therefore in his company that Rob, slightly cut off from the world, will start looking for his sow, returning to his track in Portland, where his old ties will gradually reveal themselves. We will therefore suspend the relationship of this story here, to evoke only the sensation of the strange treasure hunt at the mercy of which the mysterious identity of Rob, who apparently knows the city like the back of his hand, gradually appears to Amir’s eyes. We will come across an arena of clandestine fights, an adulterated restaurateur, an unscrupulous potentate. We will see an anthological Pascalian scene between two chefs. We will hear apocalyptic imprecations and, towards the end credits, a crystalline version of I’m on Fire, by Bruce Springsteen, by actress and folk singer Cassandra Violet. There we will witness the immemorial battle between hatred and love, anger and forgiveness, suffering and resurrection.
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