Robin Campillo, a French director known for The Guests, is more personal in his latest project Red Island. In this film he takes us to his childhood spent in a French army camp in Madagascar in the early 1970s. It is just over a decade after the Malagasy republic has emerged as a colony-free state from France. This context, however, is critical for understanding the events portrayed in the new historical drama by Campillo. However, the protagonist of the film, a 10-year-old boy named Thomas Charlie Vauselle provides the audience with another way in. It is also through these young eyes of Thomas that we witness a period of change and sadness as well as a great deal of rage.
Red Island narrates the story of the Thomas family staying at a military base in Madagascar which may look like a picturesque life. Robert, played by Quim Gutiérrez, is a junior officer, yet there is no secret that he also wants to climb the hierarchy on the base. Also, Thomas’s mother Colette, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, is a housewife with three sons and takes care of the entire household. On the other hand, Thomas is a thoughtful boy. Rather than indulging in playful activities, he buried himself in books and observed the interactions between his parents and other adults on the estate, including a rather monotonous young man named Bernard (Hugues Delamarlière). This how one recalls other politician’s efforts in their own way effectively rooted BPM in the time of Marc-Antoine Goyard. In Campillo’s previous film, Epidemic also about the AIDS crisis – and scenes from Eastern Boys one can even… especially in a montage. Another reason why Renata: Red island is worth taking notice for, at least for the tone, all other films he has ever made are in drinking suffocating ethers all.
Certainly, through strikingly young Thomas’ eyes primarily, Red Island gives emphasis on the softness and the child’s play and day dreaming of every shy child. Such observation comes readily from the first few scenes in the film, the first featuring super-girl Fantômette (Calissa Oskal-Ool) fighting some henchmen (who are costumed in muppet-like masks) and more. We however do not get this fact until a few moments later because then, we are told that Fantômette is a character of a storybook that Thomas is currently reading, but on the other hand the very fact that Campillo makes us stay in this moment in reality, scenes with Fantômette have been spliced in throughout the course of the film suggests how closely we have come to see things through Thomas.
To this extent, I would like to praise Vauselle for having successfully portrayed the young male lead by managing rather well the increased levels of untrained innocence and impressionable maturity. Sure enough, there is more than a touch of youthful arrogance projected through the glint in his eye, but that does not mean he could not handle the weightier moments, such as Thomas’ knowing glances and leers, which carry an overbearing sense of astuteness. By extension, the film is as simple as praising cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie, who enhances the ‘child’ vision of Red Island without vulgarising it or rendering it pointless. Of course, the plot comes from Thomas’ point of view; it was not only about fantasies and superheroes and roleplaying; it was also about real colonisation and real tragedies laying in the background.
Amusingly, it’s also most likely for this same reason that Red Island’s greatest strength offers it one of its greatest weaknesses. This is exacerbated by discouraging Thomas’ viewpoint, which cleverly inclines towards the world and its more mature themes. Colette and Robert’s relationship, as is the case in many realistic depictions of marriage, simmered with a quiet love alongside healthy amounts of tension and perhaps animosity. And while both Tereszkiewicz and Gutiérrez are outstanding in their parts, this is a perspective that only provides a partial understanding of who they are.
In the same vein, perhaps the most problematic aspect is that the film gives very little screen time for instance, to the historical context which the film is based in French colonization of Madagascar. It is worth noting at this point that Campillo’s film is based on his own recollection from childhood, which would not any ways be perfect, comprehensive and completely informed; yet, the last scene goes in a very radical opposite direction from Thomas, the military place, and all that we have seen up to this point. Here, in contrast the childhood cosmonaut-dom astonishment and safety are soon passé, enslaved by consternation and clamour hawking for change instead.
Similar to how Red Island made us oscillate through views on vision’s importance, where what it means to see and be seen (in any imaginable or conceptual way) is quite predominant and leaving not without importance the other way of looking at things a failure of sight. Drastic as it is – and it is so throughout the work – the great sense of beauty and harmony inspires awe and admiration in the movie. When the last shot cuts off into the credits, all along the scenes offered one cannot help feeling the sense of which story should have been told is this one.
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