THE RED TURTLE
Transformer in a half-shell
released 26 May PG | 81 minutes
Director Michael dudok de Wit
This animated film is a beautifully composed combination of castaway adventure and fairy tale. It has no dialogue (barring shouts and non-verbal exclamations), but then it really doesn’t need any. The story is minimal, a series of highly involving situations, starting with the first images of a man’s struggle in the sea beneath mountainous waves, drawn with a vividness that’s dispassionate without ever being cold.
The man reaches a small island, uninhabited by humans, and thus begin his efforts to survive and escape. With a verdant forest at his disposal, he’s soon built a raft, but when he sails out to sea an underwater force smashes it. A couple of failed tries later, he sees the culprit keeping him on the island: a huge, impassively glowering red turtle.
And then... Well, we won’t spoil the film, but that’s when the fantasy comes in. There’s an act of savage (though not graphic) cruelty; then a metamorphosis; and then our hero is no longer alone. Yet while this development brings the film into SFX territory, and is done very gracefully, in a strange way it’s almost incidental. The setting of the unspoiled environment, with its sea, birds and perkily scene-stealing crabs, suggests an all-encompassing magic that’s deeper than the casually impossible event in the middle of the film.
The Red Turtle bears the logo of Japan’s Studio Ghibli, but let’s be clear: while Ghibli helped fund the film, and its staff provided some helpful feedback, this is a French-made film with a Dutch-British director. The compositions of figures (usually in the middle or far distance), sun-cast shadows and lushly monochromatic scenery feel like pictures from a gorgeous dessinée.
You might compare the film to Ghibli’s Ponyo, but Turtle is balanced more artfully between whimsy and melancholia, a strange and intriguing new creature. Andrew Osmond