Les garçons sauvages, Bertrand Mandico, Frantzia, 2017, 110', DCP OV with Spanish subtitles
The beginning is like that of a classic film: 1920, the island of La Réunion, austere black and white. Five teenagers commit a crime and are sent by their families on a sea crossing under the orders of a Dutch captain. Now, the film changes into an anticlassical story in the form of questions: What if the five boys were not five boys? What if the whole story was filtered by magic, the occult, the world of the fantastic and supernatural? What if its port of destination was a supernatural island where the vegetation and desire were exuberant and uncontrollable? And if the colour were to impregnate everything?
In his first feature film, Bertrand Mandico offers one of the great surprises of the year: a story that, taking the classic adventures of Jules Verne and the surreal world of William Burroughs as references, is unlike any other film. His visual imagery is overwhelming: never was an island such an eroticised and violent place; never were characters so ambiguous in their gender and morals; never has a contemporary director mixed the origins of cinema and the creation of something new and still without a name with so much freedom. This film is a volcano of white and sexual lava, a story of love and terror, a new continent.
This film is a volcano of white and sexual lava, a story of love and terror, a new continent.