Nicolas Cage catches the B-movie wave at Cannes

Star in 1990 with “Sailor and Lula”, misplaced in forgotten turnips within the 2010s, Nicolas Cage bounces once more once more with “The Surfer”, a B sequence which has the whole lot to turn out to be cult, offered on the Cannes Movie Competition.

“Come on, come on!” jubilated the actor when the movie staff obtained a six-minute standing ovation following its screening, out of competitors, on the evening of Friday to Saturday.

“We completed the movie final week, receiving this standing ovation was surprising and ideal. Earlier than that, solely six folks had seen it in small elements,” rejoices Irish director Lorcan Finnegan (“Vivarium”) met on Saturday by AFP.

American actor Nicolas Cage arrives for the screening of the movie “The Surfer”, Might 18, 2024 on the Cannes Movie Competition / Sameer Al-Doumy / AFP

The Cannes public reacted rapidly by encouraging the primary character – who has no title – when he does the punch. The story is primary on paper: a father desires to indicate his son the seaside the place he surfed as a child in Australia earlier than leaving to dwell within the USA. However he falls into the lure of a gang of surfers led by a masculinist guru.

On prime of this minimalist, 100% B-movie script is grafted a biblical parable, with a villain that Lorcan Finnegan describes as “a Christ-like demon” and Nicolas Cage plunged right into a “purgatory” below the blazing solar of Australian Christmas Eve.

Bitten by a snake

With out forgetting the efficiency blurring the road between delirium tremens and actuality of the interpreter of “Cotton membership” (1984) by his uncle Francis Ford Coppola, additionally current in Cannes.

The 60-year-old American paid for himself on “The Surfer” in Australia, chosen for its extra hostile atmosphere than California. +Nic+ Cage was thus “bitten to blood on the hand by a snake, not venomous, which we didn’t discover lively sufficient for the scene”, laughs Lorcan Finnegan.

“The filming location was good, there was nobody, which implies that… nobody may come and save us rapidly, though we had an software to observe the presence and variety of sharks.”

American actor Nicolas Cage (L) and Australian actor Justin Rosniak (R) arrive for the screening of the movie “The Surfer”, Might 18, 2024 on the Cannes Movie Competition / Sameer Al-Doumy / AFP

The actor is inhabited, a bit like in “An Open Tomb” by Martin Scorsese (1999), the top of a golden decade opened by “Sailor and Lula”, by David Lynch, awarded a Palme d’Or at Cannes.

The 2000s and particularly 2010 noticed him settle for soulless productions to repay the money owed from his increase years (automobiles, yachts, island…).

“Such shit”

“Do you bear in mind +Bangkok Harmful+? +The Final of the Templars+? +Hell Driver 3D+? +The Pact+? +Effraction+? After all not! Who will bear in mind such crap?”, he blurted out within the French newspaper Le World in 2014.

The 2020s began with the extravagant “Pig” (2021), the story of a kidnapped truffle pig, nicely obtained by critics. Upon receiving the script for “The Surfer”, “+Nic+ was greater than an actor, a collaborator, he introduced a means of putting the traces, modified little issues and we gave him room to improvise” . A cult scene and line with an animal, which we don’t reveal, come from the actor.

American actor Nicolas Cage, Might 17, 2024 on the Cannes Movie Competition / CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP

“+Nic+ was extremely ready, he knew all his dialogues, he has loopy vitality, he rapidly enters the scene, 2-3 takes and we transfer ahead, between takes he hangs out on the set on a chair relatively than in his trailer -loge, like an indie movie director-actor,” describes Lorcan Finnegan.

We should additionally salute the efficiency of Julian McMahon, an Australian seen within the “Unbelievable 4” franchise or the “Nip/Tuck” sequence. He is the chief of the unhealthy surfers, with a smile that appears like that of a shark. A personality impressed by the American star podcaster Joe Rogan, a former kickboxer usually accused of relaying conspiracy theories.