What is it about?
In the early 1970s, at a French army base in Madagascar, soldiers and their families were experiencing the last illusions of colonialism.
Six years after 120 beats per minute, director and screenwriter Robin Campillo presents his new feature film L’île rouge. After the critical and public success of his previous film (about 900,000 attendees), 6 Césars, including Best Feature Film, the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, it cannot be said that this new feature film is expected. .
Robin Campillo succeeds in reinventing himself, far from the story told in 120 strokes, but retaining what made the previous one so beautiful and rich: mixing truth and pure fantasy, autobiography and fanciful memoir. The filmmaker puts the memories in perspective, while also having a lot of freedom to introduce a lot of fiction and romance. The staging is very inventive and surprises from the very first image. The filmmaker chooses a square format of 1:37 and for certain sequences, reminiscent of childhood dreams, it is the cardboard aesthetic that takes over.
So you could say there is a change in the continuum. This continuity is ensured by the ambition shown by the film, starting with the aesthetic ambition, respectively, and the special care devoted to the writing of the characters. Robin Campillo paints portraits of several characters, families and his friendly and professional entourage.
Red Island leaves plenty of room for childhood sensations. The audience is placed at the height of a child, the young hero embodied by Charlie Vosel, whose first role in the cinema. A boy inspired by the director’s childhood, “both funny and moony”. “”I tried to put my memoirs into perspective, not to find historical or autobiographical truth, but to “create a sensory world, Thomas’s world. A nascent consciousness that discovers things without fully understanding them.Robin Campillo explains in the press kit.
Less a historical film than a sensory journey through this period
We see how he observes the conversations of adults. The film depicts with great accuracy the view that a child can have on adults. while inducting it into his lush imagination. “The film favors an imagination built on exotic dreams, details perceived as exciting or menacing, sounds where historical events flash. As a result, some scenes (…) have an ambiguous status, regardless of their degree of reality or fantasy.
Charlie Vozel
and add:In this sense the film is less a historical film than a sensory journey through the period. In addition, I wanted to find an almost dreamlike logic in the sequence of scenes, as if a word or material heard leads to another sequence.“.
The Red Island carries a historical and political theme that is delicately intertwined with the family chronicle part. The more political side of the film is especially in its last part. “When I left Madagascar and returned to France, I was still very young, obviously unaware of colonialism. However, despite my nostalgia for this lost paradise, I felt that we were an anomaly in this country. (…) and that I made this film, it is precisely for the behind-the-scenes renewal of this nostalgia. Uncovering the silent violence of an apparently peaceful everyday life, but loaded with echoes of the 1947 repression. For this Paradise Lost was above all a Paradise Stolen. (…) We stole the happiness of living on this island. While our presence in this country had a very simple reason: France wanted to maintain a strategic position in the Indian Ocean.“.
The actor shows Nadia Tereskevich, Cesar for the announcement of the woman in Cesar’s last ceremony (Valeria Bruni for Tedeschi’s “Almond Trees”) and Quim Gutiérrez (recently seen in Un an, une nuit). Special mentions also to Amelie Rakotoarimalala, Hugh Delamarliere, Sophie Guillemin and David Serrero.
Note that L’île Rouge was produced by the co-producer of Anatomy of the Autumn, Palme d’Or 2023: Marie-Ange Luciani (Les Films de Pierre).
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L’île rouge, directed by Robin Campillo, co-written by Robin Campillo, Gilles Marchand and Jean-Luc Raharimanana, opens in theaters this Wednesday, May 31, 2023.
Source: Allocine
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
