Rating: NR | Runtime: 117 minutes
Release Date: May 31st, 2023 / March 5th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Memento Films / Film Movement
Director(s): Robin Campillo
Writer(s): Robin Campillo

I hope I forget it all.

Fantômette (Calissa Oskal-Ool) is never scared. No matter what the criminal brutes in her way try, she always finds a way to save the day both on the pages of young Thomas Lopez’s (Charlie Vauselle) comic books and in his imagination. Because she is who we meet first at the start of Robin Campillo’s Red Island. She’s smiling as the bad guys circle, biding her time while keeping a watchful eye—a lesson Thomas takes to heart in his own life. He might not be a hero like her, but his curiosity is just as active. So, he spies on his family to figure out what it is they’re all doing in Madagascar. And, in the end, he wonders if it would be better to simply forget any of it happened.

A tale inspired by Campillo’s own childhood, the film portrays the entitlement of French colonizers living large off the backs of a “free” citizenry still beholden to their oversight. These are men who shirk protocol when it means they can bring home an exotic piece of furniture on-board a military aircraft. These are women with little to do other than raise a family and give birth to a new child at every stop. Because this isn’t their permanent home. But it isn’t a vacation either. This is the last remnant of political control in a foreign land. A skeleton crew of overseers who know their time is almost up. So, they might as well make the best of it through alcohol and sex.

It’s a straightforward look at boredom amidst paradise. Men (like Thomas’ father, Quim Gutiérrez’s Robert) flirting with other men’s wives to flaunt power and spark jealousy. Women (like the boy’s mother, Nadia Tereszkiewicz’s Colette) going off to walk alone at night and escape their homes so that their husbands can finally do some babysitting of their own. Prejudices still reign. The locals are forced to speak French. A racial hierarchy maintains order via religious decree. And Thomas and his friend Suzanne (Cathy Pham) view it all through the lens of a caped crusader to discover the thin curtain separating childhood from adulthood thanks to parents too quick to fulfill their desires to realize the destructive nature of their decisions.

The production is fantastic. I loved the lo-fi nature of the Fantômette scenes and how everyone besides her is wearing a felt puppet-like head. The detail with the parachutes and music is impeccable and the performances authentic in their exasperation at having one foot on the sandy beach while the other remains at attention on the army base. A lot of the drama comes from Thomas’ vantage point as an interested if ignorant bystander, but we also get moments with historical potency like a brothel of locals attacking the base guards or glimpses of a civil fight happening in the background. But it’s not until the end that we finally get a sense of what the French’s presence has really done.

I would have liked more of that, but I get that Campillo’s goal was to tell this tale from a child’s eyes rather than document the events themselves. It’s not a bad choice, but it does cause those moments outside of Thomas’ vantage to feel out-of-place narratively despite also proving to be the most captivating dramatically. In many instances the filmmaker is trying to have it both ways only to end up smoothing down the edges a bit so that the whole can’t help but keep us at arm’s length. The two-hour runtime drags as a result, but not enough to render it a waste of time. Would having a cursory knowledge of the period also help matters? Definitely. But I don’t think you can fault the craft either way.

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A scene from RED ISLAND; courtesy of Film Movement.