Lorcan Finnegan’s The Surfer opens with golden sands, crystal clear waters and a tinkly, dreamy percussive score. The heavy colour saturation tinges bathes everything in a hallucinatory yellow glow. This strip of Australian coastline should be heaven. For Nicolas Cage’s titular character, it’s wrapped up with memories good and bad. And it’s about to become a nightmarish endurance test of toxic masculinity and privilege.
“Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” barks the aptly nicknamed Pitbull (Alexander Bertrand) at Cage and his son (Finn Little) when they attempt to catch a wave or two on Lunar Bay. Despite the fact that he grew up here, his American accent reveals that he is no longer a local. But this is his chance to re-establish a relationship with his son – he’s even buying a house in the area so they can rekindle their bond. He holds his ground. Scally (Julian McMahon, complete with mahogany tan and blinding white teeth) attempts to soothe the situation. Perhaps he can surf elsewhere. This beach is for the Bay Boys. There are tense, Western-like close ups of scrunched up eyes and gnashing teeth. Humbled in front of his son, Cage leaves and returns to his car.
From here, Finnegan plunges us into a desperate, humiliating series of events that pushes The Surfer to the brink of his very existence. Who else but Nicholas Cage could do a character like that justice?
From the offset, we get a sense of the relentless, searing heat. Christmas is just days away so we’re at the peak of Australian summer. We get fleeting shots of arid landscapes whilst Cage’s dehydrated panting works in time to the rhythm of the waves. Kangaroos lazily swat away flies. Sweat dapples the brow, back and chest of any man in long sleeves. Cage’s skin increasingly reddens; his lips dry and chapped.
And whilst the shoreline looks like a postcard and the sunsets look magical (with François Tétaz’s score really underlining this), you cannot help but feel a palpably threatening undercurrent. Australia certainly looks beautiful, but everyone Cage encounters is unwelcoming at best. Privilege is noticeable. Scally is described as a “trust fund baby” whilst a velour tracksuit-ed woman thinks the gang of Bay Boys “keep the riff raff out”. This is a nice area, for nice people. This is horrifically realised when two French tourists are beaten to a pulp by the gang of “good boys”.
Finnegan, along with writer Thomas Martin, explore this notion of localism alongside toxic masculinity. McMahon’s Scally seems to run some sort of corporate bullshit retreat where he promises to “break down male egos” whilst worrying that men have become to “soft”. He and his Bay Boys have cookie cutter wives, kids and cool boxes that allow into their world every so often. But mostly, it’s a lot of hazing-like ceremonies and chanting about power. And, of course, it’s about exercising that power in as cruel and humiliating a way as possible.
As Cage’s tensions with the feral Bay Boys grow, Finnegan pushes our titular character to the very edge of his sanity. The hallucinatory hot sun, coupled with the constant gaslighting and verbal abuse, would drive anyone mad. Cage loses his shoes, his sunglasses, his phone, his family heirloom watch and eventually his car. He even loses access to running water, forcing him to sup beer from a puddle full of cigarette butts. He has coffee thrown on him, he’s beaten up and he’s treated like one of the “riff raff”. He is desperate, rambling to strangers about mortgage brokers and family dinners. There’s a particularly humiliating scene which sees everyone in the beachside car park laugh at him for a longer period of time than is comfortable.
Of course, his breakdown and eventual descent into violence is gloriously Cage-ian in its flamboyance. If you’ve never seen Nicolas Cage attempt to stuff a dead rat into an overgrown frat boy’s mouth, you’re missing out. It all leads to an ending that is shocking and sad. The Surfer’s childhood memories come flooding back due to the actions of yet another haunted soul on the beach. Indeed, the last twenty minutes or so feel increasingly frantic and laced with menace.
The Surfer feels like one of those future Cage classics. He is endlessly watchable. Julian McMahon makes for a perfectly polished nemesis whilst the Bay Boys, en masse, will have you jeering at the screen. It will keep you hooked right up until the colour saturated credits roll.
The Surfer is screening at the Glasgow Film Festival. Get your tickets here.
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