A film about fantasies slipping away, Robin Campillo’s semi-autobiographical Red Island begins with a daydream, of a world of miniature buildings and puppet-faced men facing off against a masked girl. The girl is quickly revealed to be a visualization of Fantômette, the heroine of the popular Georges Chaulet book series that bears her name, and a particular obsession of Campillo’s 10-year-old stand-in, Thomas (Charlie Vauselle).
The film unfolds largely around a military base in Madagascar, from 1970 to 1972. It’s a decade after the island country’s independence from France, but various ties to the former colonial power remain in place, with French soldiers staying on their bases and working with the local troops. Perhaps inevitably, the oddly paradoxical Red Island is at once lackadaisical and urgent, relaxed but with a clear eye for how swiftly everything will end for the characters at its center.
Not that Thomas, peering...
The film unfolds largely around a military base in Madagascar, from 1970 to 1972. It’s a decade after the island country’s independence from France, but various ties to the former colonial power remain in place, with French soldiers staying on their bases and working with the local troops. Perhaps inevitably, the oddly paradoxical Red Island is at once lackadaisical and urgent, relaxed but with a clear eye for how swiftly everything will end for the characters at its center.
Not that Thomas, peering...
- 8/13/2024
- by Ryan Swen
- Slant Magazine
Robin Campillo’s strengths as both a writer and a director revolve around his ability to personalize the most sprawling of ensemble pieces, never allowing viewers to get lost despite the dozens of characters his stories introduce. Following his prior film Bpm, among the finest of the past decade, he has returned with another work that, while rooted in autobiography, has no interest in merely bringing his own formative memories to the screen. But while his previous feature put each of the characters in a wider shared journey within the Act Up movement, Red Island isn’t able to tie its vast ensemble quite as neatly; many central figures remain underdeveloped throughout, and a sudden shift in focus in the closing chapter only highlights how lacking for insight the movie is when it comes to exploring the post-colonial political backdrop of its Southern African setting.
Red Island is set in Madagascar in the early 1970s,...
Red Island is set in Madagascar in the early 1970s,...
- 10/11/2023
- by Alistair Ryder
- The Film Stage
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