Film review: The Last Face: Sean Penn’s conflict-zone romance misses the mark

The Last Face (R), dir: Sean Penn, 2hr 12min, Starring Charlize Theron, Javier Bardem

Nine years after Into The Wild, Sean Penn is back in the director's chair with The Last Face, a horribly misjudged tale set in conflict zones across Liberia, Sierra Leone and South Sudan. Penn's own humanitarian efforts have doubtless led him to tell this story, but using this backdrop to play out a tortured love story between two doctors was ill-advised.

Penn has been here before: last year's risible thriller The Gunman, a film he was heavily involved with behind the scenes, was set in the world of NGOs. But this somehow feels worse. Set across a decade, Charlize Theron plays Wren Petersen, a doctor who becomes embroiled with Médecins Du Monde, the organisation founded back in 1980 dedicated to providing healthcare for the vulnerable and displaced in developing nations.

It's here she meets Javier Bardem's mildly roguish medic Miguel and, gradually, feelings flourish. But with a fragmented structure – flashing forward to a time after their split – it's almost impossible to find an anchor into their relationship. It doesn’t help that the script, by Erin Dignam (who previously wrote The Crossing Guard, Penn's second film as director), is full of dialogue the actors struggle to make credible.

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Theron, who was here in Cannes a year ago wowing audiences with Mad Max: Fury Road, is left to flounder by Penn (who was dating her at the time the film was made). She gamely tries to make something of her character, but narrating lines like “Had I found peace? Or was I trading on Miguels?” gives the impression that she's in a bad soap opera. Bardem, who featured in The Gunman with Penn, offers little in the way of support.

With films such as The Indian Runner and The Pledge, both which played in Cannes, Penn has proved himself a director of great skill. But this mawkish effort sees him rarely in control. Veering between sentimentality and brutality, one minute you're watching Theron and Bardem suggestively brushing their teeth, the next you're seeing a man's entrails strung up. Put next to a film such as last year's brilliant Beasts of No Nation, this just looks amateur.

No doubt the real doctors who work in conflict zones are heroes that need to be celebrated, but not in this way. The film recalls Angelina Jolie's 2003 aid-worker tale Beyond Borders, which similarly dissolved into laughable melodrama. To be fair, there are some powerful scenes – notably when a young boy is forced by rebels to take aim at his father and pull the trigger. But largely you're left to agree with Theron's Wren as she mutters: “This is so futile.”