In the tropical paradise of Madagascar in 1971, nostalgia and melancholy tinge the carefree life of a bright 8-year-old boy whose father works on the air force base in the final months of French colonialism.
A film dripping with the kind of irony and atmosphere that Marguerite Duras could appreciate, only much more playful, Red Island (L’Île rouge) marks writer and director Robin Campillo’s first return to directing after his 2017 documentary on AIDS activists, 120 BPM, won the Cannes Grand Prix. Perhaps what the two films have in common is their political POV on a critical moment in time that turned out to be a turning point: in the documentary, for the gay community who took a hands-on approach to AIDS treatment; in the new film, for the French nation, who had to let go of their hold on a foreign country.
Madagascar, as the film explains, gained its independence in 1960 but the French army still hung around until the early 1970s, when the Malagasy Republic severed all ties. Describing the French attitude toward the native population in a variety of ways, Red Island is admirably not a one-note blame game, but shows the true camaraderie, friendship and even romance that occasionally sweetened one-on-one French-Malagasy relationships. But the overwhelming sentiment of the occupying expatriates is a paternalistic colonialism that deliberately demeaned locals, forcing them to learn French in school but at the same time keeping them in servile positions as a work force.
It’s a typical day of relaxation on the beach for air force engineer Robert Lopez, his wife Colette and their three sons when a formation of French planes appear in the sky, releasing a charming sequence of parachutes behind them. Later we learn these are not gifts for the populace but combat soldiers from the Madagascar army, working in tandem with the French to quell an uprising of local farmers.
Campillo uses quite a free hand in constantly shifting the viewpoint from the young son Thomas Lopez (played with deep originality by Charlie Vauselle), who adores his mother and roams the military base freely on his bike with the girl who sits next to him at school, to the self-conscious adults who know the end of the idyll is fast approaching. Their wine-soaked parties and coyly sexy dancing beautifully evoke the nerdy, insular spirit of military families. The well-cast Robert (Quim Gutiérrez) and Colette (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) have a hint of non-Frenchness about them that keeps them from being as grotesque as their friends and worth caring about, even as Colette strives for more autonomy in a stifling marriage that seems like it may be on the rocks.
Opening the film (and recurring several times) is an amusing faux-animation sequence that features the youthful superheroine Fantômette, a caped crusader who dons a black mask to battle criminals in her spare time. Thomas and his friend are totally hooked on the comic book series, to the point that his mother sews him a Fantômette costume. He will secretly don it on the family’s last night on the island before they return to France.
This is also the fateful night when the much-frowned-upon romance between handsome young soldier Bernard (Hugues Delamarlière) and his local girlfriend Minagaly (Amely Rakotoarimalala) explodes in one of the hottest dance scenes in recent memory. Interestingly, the couple is observed both by Thomas, who gets an eyeful from a window, and a local soldier who works with Bernard in the officers’ mess. He and Minagaly break the spell by talking politics when Bernard falls asleep, paving the way for a surprise final scene that takes the story out of the narrative mode altogether, into an unexpectedly realistic space of political prisoners returning from confinement. Though the film’s tonal eclecticism may be disturbing to some, Campillo is certainly bold in leaping registers like this.
Cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie does an excellent job recreating the retro feeling of a faded postcard from the tropics, along with the rather eerie Fantômette sequences. And naturally music plays a big part in bringing home a time out of time, where the songs have nothing to do with the island and merely serve as reminders of a big outside world.
Director, screenplay: Robin Campillo
Cast: Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutiérrez, Charlie Vauselle, Amely Rakotoarimalala, Hugues Delamarlière, Sophie Guillemin, David Serero, Luna Carpiaux, Mitia Ralaivita
Producer: Marie-Ange Luciani
Cinematography: Jeanne Lapoirie
Editing: Robin Campillo, Anita Roth, Stéphanie Léger
Production design: Emmanuelle Duplay
Costume design: Isabelle Pannetier
Music: Arnaud Rebotini
Sound: Julien Tan-Ham Sicart, Valérie De Loof, Thomas Gauder
Production companies: Les Films de Pierre in association with Scope Pictures (Belgium), France 3 Cinéma (France) DDC (Madagascar), Memento Films Production (France), Playtime (France)
World Sales: Playtime (France)
Venue: San Sebastian Film Festival (Official Selection)
In French
116 minutes
