Following the rather perplexing announcement that Frances McDormand is going to be lending her talents to Michael Bay’s forthcoming “Transformers 3,” comes an much more interesting move for an actress of her caliber. According to Production Weekly’s Twitter, she’s going to be starring alongside Sean Penn in “This Must Be the Place,” which also marks the English-language debut of Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino.
There is no word yet on what role McDormand is going to play in the film, but Penn is going to be taking the lead as a middle-aged wealthy rock star bored in his retirement, who takes on the quest of finding his father’s executioner, an ex-Nazi war criminal who is a refugee in the U.S. This is clearly a project that Penn is fully committed to, as it was one of the few that wasn’t thrown into doubt when he announced a hiatus last year, and Sorrentino regular Toni Servillo, who starred in the director’s “Il Divo” (which won the Prix du Jury at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival) and “The Consequences of Love,” is on board as well, presumably as the Nazi Penn’s out to kill.
Anyone who has seen Sorrentino’s earlier work will know that he’s one of the most exciting talents in European film, blessed with a distinctive cinematic vision and a gift for unexpected storytelling, and it will be fascinating to see how his brings his style to a plot that could be played in a variety of tones. He is currently scouting locations in Ireland with a view to an August start date, so we can look forward to “This Must Be the Place” some time in 2011. –Phillip Concannon