‘Red Island’ Review: Robin Campillo’s Disjointed but Alluring Memory Piece
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic Following the bracing sexual and political candor of “BPM,” writer-director Robin Campillo‘s much-laureled film about HIV/AIDS activism in 1990s Paris, “Red Island” initially appears to be a retreat into cozier nostalgia — a child’s-eye view of life on a French military base in 1970s Madagascar, flooded with sunlight, awash with the thrill of youthful exploration.
That might seem an obtuse way to portray a time and place rife with fractious post-colonial tensions, only a couple of years before the African territory freed itself from the French Community to become a fully-fledged republic.
But “Red Island” is a cannier work than that, slowly deromanticizing its purposely naive view of European family life, before sharply jackknifing into a different perspective, even a different film, altogether.
That switch is both arresting and jarring — a structural pivot that makes for a film easier to admire than it is to embrace.
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