Photo: Radek Ladczuk
The Surfer is a new psychological thriller starring Nicolas Cage. In it, Cage plays a man who leaves the United States to return to his Australian hometown, only to be humiliated in front of his teenage son by a gang of surfers at his localized home break. In retribution, he decides to remain at the beach and wage war against the gang. The completed film made its debut in a midnight screening at the Cannes film festival on Friday.
The movie was directed by Irish director Lorcan Finnegan, who previously helmed the film Vivarium, and written by Thomas Martin. The Surfer filmed with a majority Australian crew in Yallingpup, Western Australia, and even put out a casting call for local kids with ‘a bit of attitude’ to add local flavor. Throughout the shoot, we also saw periodic fleeting glimpses of Cage in action, notably filming a fight scene in the water and apparently struggling during one surfing sequence.
According to critics who attended the Cannes screening, the event had a raucous atmosphere from the get-go, with Vulture reporting that the audience was screaming and shouting before the movie even started. It seems the hype was justified, because after the end credits rolled, The Surfer received a six-minute standing ovation from the Cannes audience (while that may seem exorbitant, Cannes has a history of extremely long standing ovations, the longest being 22 minutes for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth). At one point, Cage gleefully took the mic and asked how to say “eat the rat” in French (a line from the film) and shouted “mangez le rat!” to the audience’s delight.
Early reviews are labeling the mind-bending thriller a success and worthy successor to previous unhinged Cage projects, such as the delightfully bizarre 2018 Panos Cosmatos film Mandy. Hopefully this means we’re looking at another entry into the relatively short canon of actually decent surf films. If not, it’ll at least be fun to see Cage at his unhinged best.
