Red Island (L’Ile Rouge)

To the melodious sounds of Iron Butterfly’s epic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda, Red Island opens with a strange animated sequence that has the superhero Fantômette defeating eggheaded, plain-featured villains. This segues to Thomas (Charlie Vauselle) reading the comic book in a box in his parent’s garden in Madagascar circa 1971.

His father Robert (Quim Lopez) is hosting a get-together, come welcome party for other French officials posted to the island. Madagascar though independent from France for over sixteen years still allows her a strong military presence that is beginning to grate on the population taking form of demonstrations and more aggressive actions.

But while Robert, being in the army, is more aware than most of the growing resentment, for others life continues to be idyllic having little to do all day than chat and drink. Church is the ritual and social centre of the week.

The film begins to focus on Thomas and his friendship with Suzanne (Cathy Pham) observing what’s going on around them but escaping into the world of Fantômette, as the adult world gets more complicated eventually dragging them into it.

Directed by Robin Campillo, co-written with Gilles Marchand and Jean-Luc Raharimanana, Red Island is inspired by Campillo’s childhood in Madagascar at the time.

There’s a lot of on the nose colonist comment which is heavy on the French military presence on the island. The Madagascans working in poor condition and exploited are contrasted against the French living a fairly comfortable life, virtually unaware of the growing social unrest. They live in a bubble that consists solely of their friends and acquaintances. As weird as it may seem appear it has a ring of Goodfellas as when Karen Hill comments that within the mob there were no outsiders, they did everything together.

That’s broken when one of their number has an affair with a local woman which doesn’t quite get him ostracised creates a conduit for latent racism and superiority complex of the French.

All very worthy and actually not so heavy on the political and social matters so as to disrupt the flow of the film very much. And that flow is a meander between the families, friends, local population and the children.

It all looks wonderful some of the camerawork is gorgeous its just this almost laissez faire approach leads to an element of disengagement with the whole film that makes the near two hours something of a chore.

The surreal animation sequences don’t add a lot until towards the end when they take on a clear metaphorical meaning of the situation on the island.

Red Island will be in UK and Irish cinemas and Curzon Home Cinema from 1 March 2024.