The story of an aged pop-rocker who takes on his fathers quest for Judaic revenge, This Must Be The Place is a road movie across America, with Penn’s Cheyenne taking it upon himself to seek out the Nazi that crossed his father during the latter’s time in a World War Two concentration camp sixty years earlier. The film opens a world away from the open roads of Americana, in Dublin, and, more specifically, in a shopping centre. The former rocker, who quite literally wheels around his baggage in an OAP’s shopping trolley, is more concerned with the stock market than the state of the music industry and the young upstarts who beg of him to produce their records. He’s suffering from depression, in spite of a supportive wife (marking the return to form of Frances McDormand), following the deaths of a couple of fans who took his doom-laden lyrics a little too seriously. Its made clear fairly early on that the films core “journey” will be one of cathartic self-discovery for our hero, yet it doesn’t feel contrived or cynical. It all falls in to place nicely, tonally sitting somewhere near the expedition melancholy of Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers.

The soundtrack is provided by David Byrne, whose Talking Heads track ‘This Must Be The Plac’e provided the film with a title. The score, produced alongside Will Oldham, is built around that song, with the opening bars mimicked and referenced throughout. Byrne himself performs the song in its entirety in a live performance during the film. Complete with all of the staples that one would expect of a David Byrne performance, the scene is captured in one take, the ambitious stage setting given the room to breathe that it requires and deserves.

This Must Be The Place is Sorrentino’s first work in the English language, and he crafts his new canvas to perfection. The road trip format is the logical place to start for a filmmaker creatively discovering America for the first time. Bringing to mind Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, especially during the last act of the film and partly thanks to a cameo from that particular films star, This Must Be The Place is a great success, and one that comes with our highest recommendation.