The Last Face

“It struck me that by being raised in this way, he had not been sub­ject to the con­tra­dic­tions and hypocrisies of those of us raised in com­fort,” mus­es Wren Peter­son (Char­l­ize Theron) after learn­ing that her con­flict doc­tor lover, Miguel (Javier Bar­dem) was brought up as an orphan.

Chin-stroking reflec­tions sug­gest­ing that the trau­ma­tised and under­priv­i­leged are actu­al­ly luck­i­er than poor anguished West­ern­ers are rein­forced by shots of refugees (essayed as cheer­ful sim­ple­tons) frol­ick­ing in the back­ground while white peo­ple have emo­tion­al­ly heat­ed con­ver­sa­tions in the fore­ground. If there’s such a thing as con­flict-sploita­tion, then Sean Penn has made a genre classic.

The dia­logue reach­es such lev­els of awful­ness that in the first Cannes press screen­ing, the audi­ence took to applaud­ing the most ridicu­lous lines. It feels like screen­writer Eric Dig­nam just went ahead and ran with solip­sis­tic poet­ry writ­ten while fly­ing over a war zone in a heli­copter. Penn does the script no favours by treat­ing each exchange like it is the most por­ten­tous event in human his­to­ry. Stat­ing the obvi­ous in this film-world is a mighty act. When Wren goes to the UN and says, ​“Sav­ing lives is a seri­ous mis­sion,” every­one nods gravely.

The wretched plot, for what it’s worth, involves a pon­der­ous Wren zig-zag­ging from war to peace, and from past to present, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of her late father – a hero of the Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders mis­sion. She’s fig­ur­ing out, via an intro­spec­tive voice-over, whether she’s cut out for being an aid-work­er in a war zone and also for being in love with Doc­tor Miguel Leon.

There are many delu­sions at play in The Last Face but the biggest one is that Miguel (Javier Bar­dem) is a charm­ing and plau­si­ble love inter­est. This sup­pos­ed­ly bril­liant doc­tor is a galumph­ing man-child who thinks it’s hilar­i­ous to zip up a car win­dow on Wren’s head and then dri­ve off as she side-runs beside the car, face wedged tight, as he chuck­les with delight.

The usu­al­ly won­der­ful Char­l­ize Theron is sad­dled with the indig­ni­ty of act­ing trans­formed by the exis­tence of this buf­foon. The usu­al­ly smoul­der­ing Bar­dem pos­sess no allure and the pair pos­sess no chem­istry. The idea that these clowns would be allowed any­where near the bloody, wound­ed casu­al­ties of war gives the whole film an unin­ten­tion­al­ly com­ic under­tone, like watch­ing soap opera char­ac­ters try­ing to solve world hunger. The quiv­er­ing­ly earnest tone of their inter­ac­tions is uproar­i­ous­ly mis­judged, mean­ing that as the char­ac­ters grow more seri­ous, the view­er grows more mocking.

It’s not that oper­at­ic love sto­ries in war set­tings can’t work (see: A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Gone with the Wind). The prob­lem is the broad dis­in­ter­est­ed nature in which the var­i­ous African set­tings are ren­dered. They might as well be stu­dio back­drops (note to direc­tor: repeat­ed slow-motion shots and Hans Zim­mer score don’t equate to grav­i­tas). Penn wants his char­ac­ter to have rag­ing debates about big issues but he’s not will­ing to show us any­thing more res­o­nant than a man… and a woman, whose con­cerns don’t fill a paper cup.