No Penn pals for Charlize’s ‘refugee porn’
WHEN they filmed scenes for The Last
Face in central Cape Town, Charlize Theron and Sean Penn looked loved up and happy.
On Friday in Cannes, director Penn was visibly shaken and South African exgirlfriend Theron stony-faced after their movie about aid workers in Africa was panned by critics who attended its premiere.
As the curtain fell, the crowd let out the biggest boos of the 12-day festival. The Hollywood Reporter called it a “stunningly self-important but numbingly empty cocktail of romance and insulting refugee porn”.
The Guardian gave it one star out of five, under the headline “African conflict is aphrodisiac for white people in Sean Penn’s crass romance” while Time Out called it a “pompous, ethically bankrupt humanitarian aid drama”.
The Last Face, Penn’s fifth directing effort, features Theron and Javier Bardem as doctors struggling to keep their love affair going as their humanitarian work in the war zones of Liberia, Sierra Leone and South Sudan drives them apart.
The movie features scenes of rebels destroying villages and wailing orphans begging for assistance, but the film’s focus remains firmly on the two white lead characters.
A preview audience guffawed at wooden dialogue and improbable plot lines just minutes into the movie.
Theron and Penn faced questions at an awkward press conference about the vicious reception and their high-profile break-up last year.
Penn insisted the film offered “entertainment”, while Oscar winner Theron said: “There are beautiful moments captured in the film.”
Penn’s flop at Cannes caps a rough period for the actor-director, who faced an avalanche of criticism for meeting Mexican drug baron Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in October last year, then writing about it in Rolling Stone magazine.
The Last Face is one of 21 movies vying for the Palme d’Or prize, which will be awarded today at the world’s biggest film festival. —