Robin Campillo’s Red Island was never going to be as simple a picture as it sounds on paper. Described plainly as a coming-of-age tale about a young boy named Thomas (Charlie Vauselle, clearly operating as a stand-in for the director’s own youth) living with his parents and their eclectic band of friends and stragglers on a French army base in Madagascar, Campillo’s follow-up to 2017’s excellent BPM has just as vast an ensemble as that previous project, if not a slightly larger one, and deals with roughly six or seven more narrative strands. That Campillo wishes to give them all their appropriate due is noble albeit unwise, given that every time he directs his attention away from Thomas’ point of view – through which much of the film’s events are seen – it seems like we’re heading down an unfamiliar road, one that belongs on a separate map from the one we’d been previously following.
That’s all to say that Campillo, Red Island’s writer, director, and editor, is nothing if not ambitious, something that occasionally, if not often, gets him into trouble with viewers who crave a bit of focus with their sprawling tales of dreams and observations. Were one to place Campillo at a podium alongside said viewer and ask him to argue in favor of his preferred meanderance, the French filmmaker might argue that life itself is an often aimless venture, particularly for a child. So why on Earth should we limit our gazes to one subject in particular when young eyes observe so much, sometimes without realizing what they’ve just seen? If that is convincing enough, Red Island will land with you like a hydrogen bomb of emotional reverence. Otherwise, there’s a chance that it will feel as preoccupied as it looks visually stunning – both can certainly be true.
Beginning with a stylistic swing that recurs throughout – Thomas, a comic book obsessive, sees the stories he voraciously reads come to life in his head, so his booklet’s heroine, Fantômette (Calissa Oskal-Ool), is a cape-donning pre-teen who takes on hooligans with faces that belong on felt sculptures – Campillo’s ambling drama unfolds like a string of loose memories that a man hell-bent on piecing together the events of his youth can only somewhat recall. One moment, we’re watching adults gather around a dinner table; the wives are chatting about rumors they heard through town gossip while the men discuss what drink they might crack open next. Later, we see Thomas’ father, Robert (Quim Gutiérrez), making a move on a party guest simply because his wife, Colette (Nadia Tereszkiewicz, the film’s primary standout) agreed to a friendly dance with that guest’s boyfriend. These scenes, shakily seen through Jeanne Lapoirie’s lived-in cinematography, feel forbidden, as though the fact that Thomas saw them in the first place was accidental, never to be spoken of again.
It makes sense, then, that Red Island is based in part on the director’s own childhood. Campillo grew up on an army base with his family, and it’s clear that much of what is witnessed by Thomas is what Campillo himself saw throughout his childhood, if loosely rendered for the sake of cinematic depiction. Whether or not these observations are enough to make a movie isn’t so much the question – Red Island exists, after all – as is whether or not they make one that is particularly interesting.
A shared bath becomes a battleground infiltrated by hornets; a trip into the woods with Thomas’ new pal Suzanne (Cathy Pham) evolves into an awakening, perhaps sexual, as two 10-year-olds watch make-outs galore in a forest that is apparently infamous for first kisses. The innocence with which Vauselle and Pham infuse their characters is wonderfully authentic, given the fact that they are children themselves, and one wishes Campillo were more willing to linger with this fascinating duo throughout the film’s entirety. Instead, he repeatedly pulls Thomas away from Suzanne, insisting on disruption within his stand-in’s household as the setting for all of his coming of age to occur.
The dramas within the Lopez’s home are curious enough, particularly those involving Colette and another character, Miangaly (Amely Rakotoarimalala), a Madagascar local who becomes romantically involved with a white officer. Yet while that side quest lends a sociopolitical undercurrent to Red Island’s events, the film has already been attempting to juggle a long, increasingly scattered list of themes, and it seems that the best way Campillo felt he could balance this one was to dedicate the film’s conclusion to its resolution. Thomas’ view of the finale isn’t exactly obstructed, but it feels like a full-blown distraction from everything Campillo had been building toward. Perhaps he felt as if this last detour would represent the realities of life, that not every route is as direct as it seems. But sometimes, films require a roadmap. Red Island looks quite nice, but it’s chock-full of enough zig-zags to give you whiplash.
Red Island is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Film Movement.
Red Island looks quite nice, but it’s chock-full of enough zig-zags to give you whiplash.
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GVN Rating
Will Bjarnar is a writer, critic, and video editor based in New York City. Originally from Upstate New York, and thus a member of the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association and a long-suffering Buffalo Bills fan, Will first became interested in movies when he discovered IMDb at a young age; with its help, he became a voracious list maker, poster lover, and trailer consumer. He has since turned that passion into a professional pursuit, writing for the film and entertainment sites Next Best Picture, InSession Film, Big Picture Big Sound, Film Inquiry, and, of course, Geek Vibes Nation. He spends the later months of each year editing an annual video countdown of the year’s 25 best films. You can find more of his musings on Letterboxd (willbjarnar) and on X (@bywillbjarnar).
